Out Of The Valley
by Roxxi May
Summary: Peter Campbell is a scientist studying reincarnation. He and Rev Popescu hold a ritual to bring a household ghost back from the dead, and that ghost is Jonah. But the supernatural events are far from over as secrets from Jonah's past unfold... Jonah/Wendy
1. Dr Campbell

**_A/N: This takes four or five months after the ending of the movie. The house is being rebuilt (just assume that the basement was okay and still in its original condition...). Jonah's spirit did not pass on. He stayed for some reason... but that's for another chapter. Please, please, review. :) I don't write very much in the third person so I want to know what you think._**

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**October 1987**

The elated voice came muffled through the phone speaker. "So it's all over now, Dr. Campbell?"

"Yes. My son's health is in excellent condition. Outstanding."

"And your house?"

"We're having it rebuilt, using the old plans. It'll be just the same as it was before, except…free." Peter parted the blinds in his study with his fingers and glanced fondly out the window at his two sons, Matt and Billy, roughly playing football. "Oh, and Dr. Blake? I have a suggestion for our research. See, we've only been using things that science and medicine provide. Machines and chemicals, and donated and artificial body parts. But what if we tried something more spiritual?"

"Like a ritual? That's insane, if not practically illegal."

"Science can't do everything. See, through this experience we've made a close friend of a reverend who specializes in spirits and death and what-not. I think he'd oblige to help us. Plus, we've got a…a specimen." Peter's tone and expression darkened as he glanced at the shoebox that sat dauntingly in the corner of the room, up on a shelf where the smaller kids couldn't see or reach it. "A set of remains and a spirit we can rejoin, if only we knew how."

There was a pause on the other line, some caught breaths as Dr. Blake struggled to find the right words. "You—you sure do have some idiotic ideas, Campbell. But...there must be a way. We need to try it. Perhaps spirituality _can_ trump science in a field or two."

"Better not mention that in front of my wife," Peter advised. "She's…rather religious. She takes a half-hour every day to thank God, and that dead boy who practically killed our son for saving Matt's life. Over and over. Clutching that rosary."

Dr. Blake ignored that chilling statement. "You got it, Campbell. Contact the priest and we'll test your hypothesis as soon as possible."

Peter pressed the receiver with his thumb, keeping the phone on his shoulder. Right away he dialed Rev. Popescu's number off the business card he'd taped next to the phone in case he ever needed it. Like now.

The priest answered, "Hello. You've reached Reverend Nicholas Popescu. How may I help you?" in such a feeble attempt at a corporate tone that Peter had to stifle a chuckle. But he quickly sobered. He was about to ask a priest to perform a terrible ritual that may conflict his beliefs.

"Yeah, Reverend?...Well, I'll get straight into it…We—me and a few college science professors—are doing this highly controversial study on reincarnation. All of our medically scientific attempts have failed so far…We're wondering if there is any kind of ceremony, or ritual, or whatever, that you could try?...We have remains, and a spirit that match…Yes, they're _his_…No, I don't believe he did cross…Of course you won't be held responsible for any damage—Okay, thank-you, Reverend. For all your help…Bye."

----

Reverend Popescu shakily hung up his phone, and idly stared at the curly lock of the phone cord until he felt dizzy. He crept upstairs.

He stared into the bathroom mirror yet paid no attention to the elderly man reflected inside it. An image—a swollen, bloody burnt face was branded into his mind. The pale smooth skin, the crispy ashes, the thick black hair, the missing charred clumps. The only constant: the pools of icy-colored eyes that commanded sympathy either way.

But what a dangerous ritual it would be. There'd never been any recorded successes to that date, unless there had and the breakthrough had been concealed for secrecy. The reverend imagined that if this worked, it would be kept a government secret, too.

There'd be nightfall, and a smooth blue stone. There would be a chanted Ancient phrase. And a lot of pain for the boy. Then a coma. Then, if by some miracle he remained in a sense _alive_ for more than a day, there'd be another chantry and a potion, either injected into his blood or poured down his throat. After that, it remained an indecipherable question on whether he would ever awaken from his coma or not. If not, he would eventually die again and—in this boy's case—he'd have at least an intact body to properly bury, not a pile of ashes and a piece of skull sitting in a shoebox.

Yes—the whole thing—it was Satanic arts in its purest form, at least in Reverend's opinion.

Iron cross in hand, he closed his eyes, held it to his lips, and muttered, "Forgive me, Lord, but it must help my friend…"

----

The next day, midnight, Peter put on his suit—somehow he felt this should be a formal and well-respected occasion—even though he was to put on his lab coat over top it.

"Peter," said the soft and tired voice of his wife Sara, "you really, really are going to do this?" Her expression was unreadable. Was she excited? Doubtful? Did she support him in this? Or not?

He reached up and slowly, carefully, took the shoebox down from the shelf. "Yes," he said. "Just a note…it'll have to take place on this property, probably in the basement as it seems that's where his spirit likes to retreat. Two of my colleagues, some doctors, and the reverend will be here any minute. Maybe try to keep the kids—especially Matt—away?"

"Okay." Sara kissed him, then walked off.

Peter carried the eerie little shoebox that held pieces of a once-human body, down to the basement, where the emergency doctors were there and already setting up.

"So…Dr. Campbell…" one of the doctors casually began, "There's a—so there's a ghost down here, huh?"

Peter set the box down on one of the old mortuary operating tables and cleared his throat. "Well, unless he's gone off upstairs, yes."

The doctor shuddered. "So—why does he hang around down here?"  
"We suspect he's somehow bound here. He died here, this very room." Peter gestured to the furnace used for cremating bodies. "It's the priest's theory. Makes sense to me."

The doctor gaped at the furnace. "He—_alive_?!"

Peter solemnly nodded. "Ashes," he muttered, patting the shoebox.

"Dr. Campbell? Do you think he'll adjust well? I mean, if it all…works?"

"Hm?"

"Come on, Campbell, you fool. The kid died in…the 1920's, did you say? He's never seen a television, or a color photograph, or a tape player… He's gonna emerge expecting to see Model T's and Victrolas and those crazy flapper girls."

Peter, a bit uncomfortable of his own ethics now, shrugged. "It all depends on what he remembers and what he doesn't."

A shy, quiet male voice interrupted them. "Ahem—are you ready to get started, Dr. Campbell?" The reverend stood in the doorway to the embalming room, clutching a sort of brief-case like bag and a cross pendant around his neck. Peter's scientist colleagues stood behind him, clipboards and lab coats at the ready.

"Yes," Peter clapped his hands, slipping on his own lab coat. He opened the shoebox and turned it towards the reverend. "Let us begin. Is he here?"

----

"Indeed, he is." The reverend fixed his eyes upon the charred figure standing hunched over in the corner, near the furnace. The boy recognized him.

Suddenly there was a flash in front of Reverend's eyes, and he once again was looking in on a scene, of a boy and five sitters around a table. The medium began to twitch and whimper in pain, and then from his mouth burst the horrible substance—

Reverend was whiplashed out of the vision. "Yes," he whispered, "I do indeed remember you."

And, ignoring the spirit's confused and pleading eyes, he opened his briefcase and took out the stone. He recited the mysterious words. And again. And again. He chanted the phrase until the boy's spirit tipped its head back and slowly disappeared.

The room gave a violent jolt and it was like they were transported to another realm. The ashes were now back in the furnace! They started to smolder, and rise up, and then the furnace was consumed in fire again.

So that's how the ritual worked. It reversed the death. They were watching the boy's death in _reverse motion_. Soon a crouching human form was visible amongst the flames. It was unbearable and disturbing for the scientists to watch, but the reverend had seen it before, not a few months prior. The boy's hysteric broken shrieks filled the air.

The flames flicked off, and a terrified but unharmed and alive boy sprawled, frozen by time, in the furnace.

There was another aggressive jolt in the room and they were returned to the present. Reverend realized he'd been clamping his eyes closed, and he opened them just in time to see Jonah's physical and human body standing completely naked and with a dazed expression, right in front of him. Reverend wrapped a blanket around Jonah's quaking shoulders, just before he collapsed.

Reverend held him, supporting his head. Jonah sputtered and gasped in pain. It would only be moments before he lost consciousness…

Peter pushed the doctors out of the way. "Oh, my God…" he murmured. "It's him…" He knelt down and reached out to touch the boy. He'd never seen him before, only heard the stories and accounts of his wife and son. The infamous "Jonah" wasn't as he'd pictured, at all. He looked much more fragile, smooth, _innocent_.

"Best not get too acquainted…" Reverend advised him, just as Jonah's muscles relaxed and he stopped screaming. "He's comatose. Now, we wait."

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**_Time to REVIEW. Because that little button down there is sooo enticing..._**


	2. Eerie Blue

_**A/N: Maybe some of you have noticed that the summary keeps changing. Well, I posted the first chapter on a whim, and I'm getting new ideas as I go along. I don't know about you guys, but I wish FFN allowed us more room for our summaries. It's hard to fit the boiled plot of a story into 255 characters!**_

_**P.s. Thanks-a-many to Paperhearts101, ANMProductions, and Sorceress Damia for their reviews.**_

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**Chapter 2**

Wendy brushed her hair away from her face and yawned. She looked at the crazy owl-shaped clock above her. She'd been at the library for almost an hour and a half.

When she and Matt and Billy had come home from school earlier that afternoon, Aunt Sara had told them that Uncle Peter was meeting with some colleagues, and that they should go out and do something so they would not be at home to disturb their business.

Wendy knew for sure she did not want to go see _Fatal Attraction_ with Matt and his girlfriend Carrie for the third time. So here she was, at the library, peacefully researching things she didn't need to know, secretly enjoying the quiet Beethoven symphony that whispered from above.

She wondered if she'd gotten hooked on researching their house and the town's history while she and her cousin were tracking down the mystery of Jonah and Ramsey Aickman. She clicked past newspaper archive after another, watching the white pages and blotchy black words whir by her, until she spotted something she found interesting. The house probably still had a spell on her. She was still determined to find out every secret of its every corner, even though it was technically not _the house_ anymore.

_June 20, 1927._

Funny. That was dated two days after the article on the five people dead and Jonah's "disappearance."

_MORE DRAMA SURROUNDS SUSPICIOUS MORTUARY. —GIRL FOUND DEAD, POISONED._

_Goatswood, CT—Only three days ago, the _Goatswood Gazette_ reported the five baffling deaths and the disappearance of one after a séance held in the local mortuary, owned by Ramsey Aickman. Now, more unexplainable horror unfolds within the building as yesterday the body of 16-year-old Virginia Hayes was discovered dead in an upstairs bedroom, having poisoned herself with formaldehyde, used to embalm bodies._

_But Hayes was not the suicidal type, says her friend, Lucy Anne Patterson. At least, not until just days before her death._

_"She was very happy…until news reached her that our mutual friend had turned up missing after a deadly ritual," Patterson told the _Gazette_. "It seems as though she went crazy with grief…and she broke into the house to try and find him. I tried to stop her, but she went anyway, in the dead of night."_

_And true it is, sources have confirmed, that Hayes was an acquaintance of renowned boy medium, whose name is Jonah, although his last name has not been revealed. _

_Could the missing Jonah have anything else to do with this new mysterious death?_

_Police say no, because they'd searched the house a few nights prior, and could not find him. "He's obviously fled," says the local Sheriff._

_So should the death of Virginia Hayes be ruled as just another tragic teen-age suicide? Or should police dig deeper into the mystery?_

_Police and the _Gazette_ will keep the Goatswood residents updated._

Wendy's breath caught and she shakily brought her hand to her mouth. She didn't know what to think of it. She wouldn't let herself think of what to think of it. Had this Virginia girl been haunting the place, too?

She recalled an experience from a previous month that she refused to tell anyone about, especially now that things had calmed down. She didn't want to bring the awful memories and stress back. But one morning, as she stepped out of the shower—the real shower horror came later with the curtain incident—but that morning, she stepped out into the muggy air, and stifled a scream when she saw that the fogged-up bathroom mirror bore the words, _Watch out for him, pretty girl. _That same night was the night the bird flew in through her window, and she saw what she now knew was the ghost of Jonah. Who was it that wrote it on the mirror?

Virginia…

Well, if it had been her or not, it was safe to assume that Virginia—along with all the other spirits, sans Jonah, who decided he'd stick around—had passed on, too. There was no need to worry about her, right? Who says she was even one of the ghosts to begin with? Maybe she passed on right away, like you're supposed to.

Maybe…

----

Matt pulled his new car to a stop in Carrie's driveway. Well, it wasn't a _new_ new car; it was used, but it was _his_ first. He loved being able to drive, now that he was healthy and strong. He'd resumed his old passion—basketball. He was on varsity this year, as a senior, and he had a beautiful girlfriend and a no-longer-haunted-except-for-peaceful-Jonah house.

Life seemed perfect.

He and Carrie shared a long and sweet kiss. He relished the feeling that he got inside him when he kissed her—it was like being freed of cancer over and over again. Perhaps it was an exaggeration, perhaps not, but one way or another she always swept him off his feet and warmed his heart.

"I had a really fun time, Matt," Carrie murmured.

"Even though we did the same exact thing we did last time, and the time before that?"

Carrie breathed out a slow, girlish chuckle. "We had no third wheel this time. We could make out in the back of the theater like the clichés we are with no one else to think about."

Matt agreed, and a few minutes later pulled into his own driveway, just as Wendy and Mary were parking their bikes and Billy was dropped off by his friend's mom.

Wendy stared at the yard and gravel driveway. She caught Matt's arm and whispered to him, "Look at all those tire tracks. Your dad had a lot of people over." She swallowed. "I know it's none of my business—not at all—but sometimes I wonder what they're doing, you know? Don't you ever…imagine? And why is it our house all the time, where they meet at?"

Matt took a few moments to consider these points she'd made. Truthfully, he pondered all the time. "Yes, I do wonder…but like you said, it's none of our business. I think it may even be top-secret. Like government stuff."

"UFOs? Military weapons? Doomsday preparation crap?"

"I don't know, Wends…" He gently took her arm. "Come on, let's go inside."

Once they'd entered the kitchen, and Wendy had inquired the kids on how their play-dates had gone, Matt approached the refrigerator to fetch himself a can of Coke.

"Oh, nice," he said, noticing the quickly scribbled note from his mom taped to the fridge. _Went out with your father. Be back by nine. Wendy's in charge. _"Mom's not even here. It's just the four of us."

"Sweet!" Billy yelled. He and Mary stampeded upstairs for a worriless game of hide-and-seek, before Wendy could remind them not to be monsters and break anything in the brand new house.

Wendy reached in and got an apple from the fridge. Even though it'd been quite a while since the paranormal events of the Aickman House, it was obvious even to Matt that she still hesitated before taking a bite. "I'm going upstairs…I've got some homework to do."

"And you couldn't have done it at the library?" Matt teased. Wendy was such a brainiac.

She grinned. "I had other things to do at the library—" she broke off, and her grin faltered somewhat, and he couldn't figure out why she was suddenly uncomfortable. He decided to shrug it off and trudged downstairs.

He cracked open his Coke. "Good evening, Jonah…" he muttered under his breath, glancing towards the locked-up old embalming room.

But, as it turns out, unbeknown to Matt, the spirit was no longer present…

----

Sara threw her arms up in frustration. "Then why don't you go get him and prove that I'm his wife?" she snapped. Peter had told her to, "Come and see this—this miracle, you won't believe your eyes—he's beautiful," but it made the task rather impossible that the guards wouldn't let her in or believe she was his wife.

After the ritual, they'd taken the comatose boy and brought him to a tiny, tiny hospital, in a room far off and secluded from the others, and kept the entire hallway and doorway to the room guarded. Of course Sara understood; they'd just _reincarnated_ a kid from the 20's, for God's sake! They couldn't exactly go waving their arms around boasting about it. It had to remain _super_ top-secret.

Would they even be able to tell their kids?

"Don't worry guys, she's mine," Peter suddenly stepped in and took Sara's arm, ushering her past the guards. He kissed her forehead just to prove it.

The couple power-walked down the hall to the room bustling with secrecy. As they walked, Peter rambled, "Oh, Sara, you have got to see this. That kid—the dead boy Matt was telling us about—he's there, he's in that room. And by God, to just watch him there, to see the spikes on the heart monitor and to watch his chest with his breathing… it's a damn miracle!"

Peter showed the guards at the door his ID hanging around his neck, and told them that Sara was with him. The two proceeded into the room.

Sara looked in and numbness shot to her fingertips. All the times she'd seen her son out like a light and perfectly still in a hospital bed—never comatose, but very much _out__—_came rushing back to her. And according to that very son, this boy right here was the reason why she never had to see anything like that again.

_He cured_ _me, Mom! I helped him help the spirits and so he cured me…_

"Not like you pictured him, is he?" Peter said gently, putting his arm around her.

No. Sara had pictured wild blonde hair and a twisted, angry face, with a big nose and big forehead. This boy with long, albeit neat, black hair and a serene, pale face seemed much too calm and loving to be responsible for terrorizing her family, yet it made sense that this beautiful kid had cured her own son's cancer. She couldn't get it straight in her mind that it was the same ghost that did those things.

"You should see his eyes, Sara," Peter said. "Huge and blue. And I mean blue… a bit eerie, but still brilliant."

Sara, though, had only absorbed the "huge, blue" part, and hadn't paid attention to the rest. A disturbing, sorrowful thought had come to her. She turned to her husband. "Does he have a mother?" she asked, surprised to find that her voice was choked.

Concern suddenly filled his eyes as he glanced at the boy, at his busy heart monitor. "Come on, Sara…he's supposed to be seventy-something years old…his mother would be in her nineties if not older…"

She would not admit it, but for a moment, she pictured herself with a dark-haired woman that looked considerably like her son, and they would go window-shopping and out for ice cream while their boys hung out or played basketball together. She loved making friends with her sons' friends' mothers. She'd even borrowed Carrie's mom's sweater!

But Sara quickly realized that this fantasy was utterly ridiculous, if not flat-out insane. This woman, Jonah's long-lost mother, was either dead or very, very near it. Then she thought about how, when Matt would wake up from naps or surgeries in the hospital, she was the first person he asked to see.

Womanly, motherly empathy filled her up until she found herself taking the boy's hand and sobbing.

"Peter?" she asked her husband, who was behind her, rubbing her back. "Where's he going to go when he wakes up? I mean—come on…no parents, no relatives that we know of…We can't exactly set him into the world, because of…this. We have to keep him fairly sheltered…"

He sighed, catching the hint that the crazy girl wanted to _keep_ the kid. Like when Billy brought home the stray puppy. He pictured them taking Jonah in. The kids would get spooked, Matt especially, and with Wendy and Mary, did they really have the resources for another kid? "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, honey…"

"How long till we administer the potion again?" Peter asked the Reverend, who was keeping round-the-clock watch on Jonah.

"When he's reached twenty-four hours alive—"

He was cut off by Sara's wild gasp. She still held Jonah's hand in hers. "Peter! Reverend!" she shouted. "I—I felt him twitch. His hand twitched. It was like he squeezed back for a split second—And again!"

The reverend took a few steps closer until he was looming over the bed. The boy's breathing had quickened. His facial expression had seemed to change, and his left eyebrow twitched. "This—I have no idea what's happening here." He reached and brushed some hair away from Jonah's face. "Prepare the doctors," he commanded.

But not one medic had time to move a muscle or say a word before a pair of eerie blue eyes were opened and glancing timidly up at them all.

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	3. Jonathan

**_A/N: Took a while. Well, I went to Chicago for Thanksgiving (a holiday well wasted...) and I've been making up time for violin-practicing. Anywho, I eventually got it done. Someone suggested to me that I needed to explain Rev's and Peter's motives for bringing Jonah back a little more. It'll take a while to get the whole picture--because Rev and Peter aren't entirely sure themselves yet--but this chapter covers a little bit. :)_**

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Jonah's mind was like a trench. Amidst being shrouded in darkness and that odd coming-to feeling, he was half-way in a some sort of memory of a young lady with hair scissors, and half-way in a nightmare about necromancy.

His head and joints had a hallow ache to them, as if his body was grieving over someone. It was like his eyes were glued shut, and he couldn't move a muscle.

Yet coursing through him, in all of it, was a distantly familiar rhythm surging through his veins. Another, slightly slower, steady rhythm inflated and deflated him from the inside.

Heart beats. Breathing.

He felt horribly, cruelly…physical.

Alive.

He began to feel more than just the aches. He became aware of skin against his own hand, a bee sting-like feeling in his arm (a needle? A shot?), and he felt as though he was now more in control of his movements.

Someone was holding his hand. He tried to squeeze back, or make some kind of movement to let that person know that…that…he wasn't sure. Just to let them know that he wanted to let them know of something.

—_Yes_. He made his fingers twitch. An ever-so-slight spasm of muscle. He could do this…_Hurry up and come-to, Jonah…Wake up and find out where you are…And find out why you feel more alive than you ever have in beyond sixty years_.

Voices. Voices. He could now hear faint voices. Most decipherable, a very flabbergasted lady. And two men talking, perhaps trying not to sound frantic at whatever the lady was frantic at. —What was that he said? Something about doctors. And somebody touched his head. Pulled his hair away from his eyes, like _she_ always liked to do…

He grabbed on to as much strength as he could, enough to squeeze the hand again and open his eyes, making himself regain consciousness.

Jonah let out a childish, frightened whimper. It was white, all white, blindingly white. The aches became screaming pains. There were strange glowing boxes, machine-type things, all around him, and a blonde woman with teary eyes, a chubby younger man, and a frail-looking bald old man all loomed over him.

_Sara and Peter Campbell, and Nicholas Popescu…!_

Jonah really hoped Matt or Billy or Wendy or Mary weren't there, too, for he felt like he was about to cry from the searing pain. Pitiful that a medium who choked up ectoplasm every Tuesday and Friday night for almost a year couldn't handle some amount of bodily pain.

Before long he couldn't contain it any longer, and he unleashed a wail of agony. It was like being burned again, except he could feel it more, and it was slower; duller knives. A moment later, a doctor hurriedly poked a needle into his other arm. "So that's what the potion is for," said Popescu, with a yellowed old pamphlet opened in his hand. "It prevents pain when one wakes up. But since he came so soon, so unexpectedly…I hope this works…"

It took several excruciating moments, but eventually the stabbing aches and dull burning started to fade away. Jonah desperately tried to calm himself, but he was more terrified than he'd ever been—comparable, even, to when he was attempting to flee from the spirits' wrath but ended up in the cremating furnace—

"Can you hear us, Jonah?" Peter said, slowly, as if he were nervous. Which Jonah could understand. He was nervous, too, because what if they were angry with him for what he did to their family? Oh, God, what were they doing to him?  
But he swallowed and nodded. "Where am I? What's happening?" he demanded, surprised at the sound of his voice physically in his ears for the first time in what seemed like forever.

The reverend cleared his throat. "You're…You have been brought back to life, Jonah. Reincarnated," he said, matter-of-factly.

Jonah began to frantically pant, taking in gasp after gasp of horror. "What—Alive?—_Alive_?! But—but I—what's going to happen…?!"

"Shh…" Sara put her hand on his forehead. "Calm down, sweetie. It's okay, you're okay…"

Jonah forced himself to relax, so that Sara would stop touching him, at least. But he had to get answers. Alive—alive. "But how? Why me?" He still couldn't stop his voice from cracking and shaking.

Peter sat on the edge of his bed, letting out an exhausted—maybe even a bit ashamed—sigh. "We've been studying reincarnation, my team and me. We tried all of these scientific experiments, all these lab tests, to try and bring somebody back to life. All of them failed. The experiences surrounding our—_your_—_the_ house changed my views on religious experiments, and I knew you hadn't passed on, and we still had your remains—plans for a proper funeral baffled us, really—and we thought…"

Jonah laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes, trying to think. He was alive again. He could start over and live as though he never stopped. The second chance he always thought about, even before he died. However, this second chance would not be like that of his desperate dreams. He couldn't go back to 1927—better yet, '26, or even '25—and pick up from there, to prevent the things that threw his world six feet under and led up to his death. No, he was stuck in 1987. And just being thrust into the era he was not destined to meet as a teenager—he was supposed to be an old man—was enough to make him wish he wasn't brought back.

"1987," he whispered, then shook his head, tangling his hair against the pillow.

----

Reverend Popescu wandered out into the hospital hallway and slumped against a wall. He couldn't imagine dying now and suddenly being ripped back alive in 2047. He felt so guilty. He'd seen the poor boy Jonah not exactly tear up, but get that kind of damp, vulnerable look, after he came to realize that he wasn't in his time anymore.

Truth was, Reverend had wanted to bring him back, not just to aid Peter in a revolutionary, earth-shattering study and be the hero that did it all, but for something even more selfish. He'd wanted to meet Jonah, to see him healthy, breathing, unscathed, unburned.

And then there was the budding childhood curiosity of his father's stories.

When Nicholas was a young kid, he'd been fed, of course, his hefty share of ghost stories—Goatswood loved small-town folklore. But nobody could tell a ghost story quite like his father. Most story-tellers grin and make sound effects and often too overzealous with their tale. But his father—Melvin Popescu—would sit there and quietly tell the story, with a grave look on his face and dread in his eyes that suggested he'd _been there_.

And Melvin's classic, signature, most chilling tale was not that of a ghost, but multiple stories of a boy who became a ghost. A boy Melvin referred to as Jonathan. But he always had a long "o" sound in the name. Instead of John-a-than, he pronounced it as Joe-nah-than. And Jonathan did various awful things (petrified his siblings to death, stole his father's moonshine, drove his mother to the crazy house, mistreated his very few friends) and one day, Jonathan lied to the town and told them he could "see" the most incredible things. That he could see death wandering down the path to claim its next soul. As punishment for falsely claiming to see death and the spirits it claimed, the town law system ordered that he be sent to be an apprentice at a funeral home. To work with dead bodies and prepare them for burial, "since he seemed to sadistically enjoy death so damn much."

But at the funeral home Jonah-than still continued to cry wolf about seeing ghosts. He even tried to talk to them, but every time he did, he would end up vomiting for hours. One day, a girl went to see him try and talk to a ghost. After the vomiting-session, the girl decided he was a fair young man enough, and offered to marry him as a way out of his penance. Jonathan, though he thought she was a fine young woman, too, bitterly refused, and the girl went on to date a very religious man, but that never stopped her from falling into a depression.

One night, a few weeks after Jonathan refused the marriage proposal, he tried once more to speak with the ghosts. This time, though, something went terribly wrong…and he was never seen by a Goatswood resident again.

"Nobody knows what that terrible something was," Melvin would conclude. "Some say he's still out there, others say he's in some faraway jail or asylum…and others say that _he's a ghost that haunts the Goatswood funeral home_."

Nicholas Popescu had realized, from the moment he heard about the case of the Campbell family, that he was dealing with the myth of Jonah-than the Medium.

He always felt a sort of insane sympathy for poor, exiled Jonathan as a kid. He wanted to prove, with the reincarnation, that he wasn't evil, even though he already knew the medium—whose name was actually Jonah—hadn't been a demonic spirit, and that in a sense it wasn't his fault.

He felt so unbelievably willed to ask Jonah the Medium if the story was 100% true, that in his life prior to the mortuary if he was really that horrible of a person. He longed so fervently to bring him to reverse his cruel death and ask him.

Peter Campbell did it for work. Nicholas Popescu did it out of pity for the poor teenager, and to put rest to his own recurring childhood nightmare.

The only thing he never considered was Jonah's feelings.

Right now the boy was sleeping, perhaps an attempt to put off harsh reality for a while longer, and he was off his IV but his heart monitor kept rhythm. Sara and Peter stood by the bed, whispering to each other in a heated yet hushed discussion.

Nicholas tried to picture Jonah in jeans and a sweater, "hanging out" with his friends, watching TV or listening to an eight-track tape. It didn't make sense. He belonged in a button-up shirt and suspenders, helping his father with "men's work" and winding down near a Victrola.

But nothing could be done; the only way to reverse the ritual was to just kill him again. Which was far from an option, too.

----

Later on, when Jonah had awaken once again, Nicholas approached his bedside. He nervously twisted the hat in his hands.

"I'll be leaving for a while…a short break. I'll be back in a few hours, I promise," he said. He couldn't believe it; what would his father, now in a nursing home, say, now that his son was speaking with the real-life Jonathan?

Jonah nodded, never stopping for one split second to remove his eerie blue stare from the reverend. "If you wish to stay away longer," he murmured, "I wouldn't object to it. You're still sick and must be exhausted. Rest yourself." He pulled himself upright. For a moment he appeared as though he wanted to say something more, and Nicholas too wished he could add something to the conversation, but neither found words.

They remained in solemn silence for a while, before Nicholas slipped his hat on his bald head, and said, slowly, "Good-bye, Jonah."

"Good-bye, Reverend Popescu."

"Please." He patted the young man's shoulder. "Please, you may call me Nicholas."

Jonah made no movement, but nodded with his relaxing stare. The corners of his mouth twitched, and Nicholas couldn't decipher whether it was in sadness or in an attempt at a smile.

"Take care and get rest, yourself," he said, and tipped his hat to him, and strode out of the room.

* * *

**_A/N: Interesting thing: I read once that "Jonah" is considered a horrible name in some countries and by some sailors, because it is said to bring bad luck because of the Jonah from the Bible who got swallowed by a whale. Hmm. Well, I don't think it's unlucky. :D_**

**_More reviews = Faster chapters. Reviews make the world go round. So go ahead and click the green button. OBEY THE GREEN!_**


	4. The Flicker Game

**_A/N: This chapter, I'm skeptical about. The prose is a bit dry. _**

**_Anyway, thanks to paperhearts101, Sorceress Damia, With100SweetKisses, NikkiLuvsWolfs13, and jess for their reviews. I got more than expected for last chapter so let's keep 'em coming!! :)_**

* * *

Out in the hallway, Peter held his hand up to silence his upset wife. "Really, Sara, and what are the kids going to think? The boy—" he gestured toward the closed door between them and Jonah, "that kid—completely terrorized them!"

"Peter!" Sara cried out. "He was trying to help us. He had to get our attention somehow. He couldn't exactly just tap one of us on the shoulder and say, 'Um, sir—or ma'am—will you help me cleanse the house of evil spirits? Pretty please with a cherry on top?' " She groggily flipped her hair away from her eyes and set her hands on her hips. "And it wasn't him that did the really awful things. The moment Reverend removed him from the house, Matt was sliced up by the others, and Wendy was turned into a shower curtain burrito!..." she paused to catch her breath. "He was protecting us, Peter."

"But the kids won't understand that," Peter said quietly. "I understand where you're coming from, honey, but I just feel it's a bad idea. Simple as that."

"Matt does," Sara snapped. "Wendy does. We could have a long talk with Mary and Billy so they understand, too. And we'll work out the kinks from there. But Peter, really, where else is he gonna go? Put him with some family, he asks what a TV is or how to how to press play on a radio, they think he's mentally retarded. Send him out on his own at sixteen—modern kids can barely handle that, and he doesn't even know the world he's dealing with. But Peter, _we know him_. We know his name, big chunks of his life story, recognize his face and understand his behavior to a certain extent. There's just no other way!"

Peter stood there, silent. He knew that Sara had won. And especially dealing with the top-secret nature of this boy's very pulse, only they could be trusted enough to not let it slip that this kid had been reincarnated.

Sara knew by Peter's stunned quietness and firm expression that her speech had convinced him. "Thank you, Peter," she said. "This is really nice of you, even if you don't entirely have a choice." She stepped forward and leaned exhaustedly against him, and wrapped her arms around him.

Peter laid his head against Sara's, breathing in the scent of her hair. "Why don't we just open up an orphanage, huh?" he murmured with a sarcastic grin.

----

The following morning, Wendy trotted down the stairs with shower-fresh wet hair and a baggy red sweater with her stovepipe blue jeans. Her casual Saturday babysitting around the house outfit.

In the kitchen, Sara leaned against the counter, rubbing her forehead, seemingly oblivious to the wildly beeping coffee maker. Wendy rushed over and switched off the machine. She snatched the scalding pot and Sara, a little embarrassed, helped her pour out cups for Sara and Peter and Matt.

"Thanks for your help, Wends," Sara sighed. "I just—I had a rough night. Couldn't sleep. Under a bit of stress. But you understand."

Of course Wendy understood. She could tell that Sara really was stressed out: she only talked in those short, staccato sentences when she was under pressure.

"No problem." She paused. "I sort of couldn't sleep either. I mean, I got to sleep and made it through most of the night but I had a nightmare around 4:30." That nightmare…Already she knew that she was letting the chilling story of Virginia Hayes get to her. The nightmare depicted Virginia—or maybe it was Wendy herself; the girl looked like her but dressed old-fashioned—chugging formaldehyde, and when she thought of formaldehyde she watched the original house burn down, and when she thought of fire she thought of Jonah. That creepy—actually, _eerie_ was a better word—, softly beautiful face from the pictures. And the burnt-up ghost she laid eyes for a split second upon that terrifying night. And the birds. The graveyard.

Then Wendy had jolted awake, her thoughts racing, so she decided to get up and read _Great Expectations _until she felt drowsy again.

Sara and Wendy set the table and made waffles and sausage. Sara said, almost secretively, "We're having a family meeting today. Perhaps one of the most important ones we've ever had." Wendy glanced in the dining room, where they had dinner and supper but had breakfast in the kitchen. When the rebuilt the house, they kept it very close to the original, except for the dining room. The dining room now had tan-painted plaster walls instead of gorgeous woodworking, but most strikingly different was the table, which was not wooden and circular but was basically a black, dramatic rectangle that insisted, _No, no, this room isn't an exact replica of a room that once held ghastly séances. No, don't be silly_. The last time they had a "super important" family meeting was when Peter announced that the room used to be a funeral parlor, and Matt had visions of Jonah mid-séance.

Who knew what this one would involve.

Wendy guessed: Sara or Peter got a new job and they have to leave the house altogether. Sara and Peter are planning to have another baby (which would be ridiculous). Someone died. Someone was getting married…who knew. Wendy shuddered and prayed that it didn't have anything to do with her own parents.

Sara whiplashed her out of her thoughts, handing her a bottle of syrup. "Set this on the table, please, sweetie, while I take care of the hash browns."

----

Matt stepped out of the shower and quickly dressed in sweat pants and a tee. He could smell the servant-women cooking upstairs. His stomach rumbled wildly; all he'd had last night that you could call a "supper" was the popcorn he shared with Carrie at the movies.

"Good morning, Jonah," he sing-songed. He waited for the lights to flicker in response. Nothing. "Jonah?" The light remained undisturbed.

After the house had been rebuilt—which was about a month ago—Matt insisted on keeping his downstairs room. By then they were all pretty aware that the only remaining ghost was Jonah, who hadn't passed on for whatever reason, and they were fine with that, because of the fact that he kept to himself, relatively calm, and never disturbed anyone. He even proved to be helpful at times—once, Sara ecstatically ran downstairs and announced to Matt, "You'll never guess who helped me find my car keys! He handed them _right to me_!"

Matt had become depressed about the fact that he couldn't see Jonah anymore. Of course that was due to the fact he wasn't dying anymore, which was always a good thought, but he still wished he could see him, or get a vision or two—maybe Jonah could show him some happier memories of his; a make-out session with a hot flapper chick or something.

But it quickly occurred to Matt, while watching Ghost Busters, that even though he couldn't see Jonah, nor did they have their mental connection, it didn't mean Matt couldn't talk to him. He remembered how Jonah could make the lights flicker. So he devised a little game where Matt would ask a yes or no question, and Jonah would flicker the lights, once for yes and twice for no. It made for some detached and not very heartfelt conversations, not to mention it wore out the poor light bulbs. He wanted to ask Jonah questions that required more than a negative or affirmative, and he wished Jonah could ask him some back, and they could both contribute statements instead of just questions and answers, like real humans in idle chat. But either way, it meant something to Matt that he could continue contacting the specter who saved his life.

"Good morning," Matt would say. One flicker (once could also mean a retaliation of a phrase such as "good-bye" or a an agreement with something, like "Me, too." Thus twice could mean a disagreement).

Sometimes Matt would get more personal. "Wendy's parents called today. She refused to talk to them…Was Mr. Aickman your dad?" Two flickers.

Sometimes _too_ personal. The last time he spoke with Jonah, he'd been adoringly describing Carrie. He asked, "Did you ever have a girlfriend?" There was a long pause. Then the light flickered neither once nor twice, but went out with a furious _CRACK. _The door to the embalming room slammed shut.

Now, Matt stood befuddled and a little offended that Jonah hadn't answered him for a whole two days. "Jonah…come on…why won't you answer me? It's like…you disappeared on me…" Then a thought occurred to him. Had Jonah just decided to up and cross over, with no sign or notification to Matt? Just leave without telling him?

Wendy appeared at the top of the stairs. "Matt, time for breakfast," she called. "We also get a family meeting. That'll be fun."

"Okay." Then he turned to the embalming room, at its menacing dark windows. "When I get back," he said to his room, "you'd better be here. _Please_."

----

Everybody had been seated at the black rectangular breakfast table in the kitchen, that matched the one in the dining room. The pancakes and sausage and coffee and juice had all been distributed, some uptight chat had been made. But the only thing that was on everyone's minds as they ate was the meeting. The parents tried to gather their courage to break the news, the children twisted their brains over what the news could possibly be.

Matt eyed his father. He couldn't take it anymore. He'd break the silence…

"So, Dad," he said, "what was it you wanted to tell us?"

Peter took in a deep breath and set his fork down. "As you all know, kids, we've been though a lot, concerning this house, I mean. Among other things. But this house in specific. And you know about my work as a scientist, about its top-secretive qualities, and how whatever it is I've been working on, I've been failing my experiments. Well, I'm here to tell the truth about my work. See, kids, I study a thing called _reincarnation_. Does anyone here know what that is?"

Wendy sat up in her chair, but she didn't lose her uneasy expression. "It could be possibly two things. Either the quasi-Hindu theory that when one dies they are reborn as a separate being, hence the phrase, 'in another lifetime…' Or it could simply mean bringing a dead person back to life just as they were before they died. Either you do meditations and help people find their previous beings—maybe I used to be a tree—or you try to put life back in dead people."

_What a_ _brainiac_, Matt thought.

"Yes, good, Wendy," Peter said. "Of the two you brought up, I study the second one. For a very long time now, I've been trying to bring a life back from the dead. I've done countless experiments, and all of them have failed…" he paused, "except one. Just two days ago, I had a major breakthrough. With the help of not science, but instead an ancient religious ritual—my team, a priest and I succeeded in bringing someone back to life." Mary and Billy's jaws dropped. Matt and Wendy shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"Well…" Wendy breathed, "now what?"

Peter seemingly ignored her question and turned to Matt. "Has anything…I don't know…felt different, in that basement?" he asked him.

"I—I don't know. What sort of different?" Matt's family was not aware that he still spoke to Jonah as directly as he could. He made sure of it.

"Oh, I don't know," Peter tried to sound casual, "like, maybe something that was there before, and it isn't there now? Or, _he_ isn't there now?"

"What? What? I don't know what you're saying…"

Matt was caught off by a huge, appalled gasp from Wendy. She brought her quivering hand over her mouth. "No way—you didn't—you couldn't have! You brought—you brought _him_ back?"

Peter nodded.

Matt and Wendy simultaneously stood up from their chairs, in some kind of strong, shocked emotion that they couldn't quite name, but racked their hearts. They both felt dizzy and couldn't breathe. Billy and Mary looked terrified. "I can't believe you!" Matt shouted. "You actually _reincarnated_ Jonah!"

Sara spoke for the first time. "Please, you two, calm down and sit down. This talk isn't over yet." The two cousins irritably sat down, and Sara and Peter explained to the kids their plans to take Jonah in to live with them. "It's very important that he stays with us," Sara said, "because someone like him who's not yet accustomed to all the little gadgets and what not of today's world can_not_ live on his own or with a family unaware of this situation. And we must keep this very, very secret. No one tells anyone. No friends, no teachers, no girlfriends…not even relatives if they don't live in this house. If anyone you know asks, just tell them that he's our foster child—which he is—and that it's none of their business, and change subject."

"But, Aunt Sara," Mary worriedly piped in, "isn't Jonah…mean?"

Sara sighed. They should've explained it to the younger ones a lot better just after the paranormal experiences happened. They concealed information to protect their innocence and to make it easier for them to move on, but now it was all just confusing them.

For a long while, Mr. and Mrs. Campbell explained to their youngest two which ghosts were the bad guys and which were the good ones.

"It was Jonah who took Matt's cancer away, in the end, and got rid of all the bad ghosts," concluded Sara in her forged story-telling tone.

"Wait a minute…" Peter looked frantic. "Jonah took Matt's cancer…but where did it go? Oh, boy," He hurriedly got up and picked up the telephone, "Yeah, Dr. Reeves, we need a blood test—bone marrow aspiration if need be—on our _special patient_, stat. An event in his previous life has me worrying," he commanded, and returned to the table. "Um—I'm sure he's okay," he reassured a pale and freaked-out Matt, who was remembering all too well what a bone marrow aspiration was like. "It's just a precaution."

"So," Sara faked a smile and clapped her hands once. "Now you all know. Just…relax today, prepare yourselves, let it all sink in. We'll be able to bring him home in a couple of days, if not tomorrow."

----

Wendy spastically paced about in her bedroom, so fast she was almost jogging. Her emotions were getting the better of her, her face was hot and flushed, and she trembled mercilessly.

Jonah. Jonah.

She'd had his old bedroom, Matt had informed her. She'd slept in the same bed-frame, stored her clothes in the same closet, looked in the same mirror, stared at the same birds on the same robin's egg-blue walls. Of course none of it was the same now. The walls now depicted no birds, but were a plain, solid shade of light purple—Wendy's favorite color, as requested.

She yanked open her dresser drawer, digging through the socks and bras until she reached the manila envelope (she'd labeled it, "Report cards and Misc. Documents" to throw a snooper off course) and took out the newspaper articles that she'd printed off at the library while researching the house's history. She didn't read them—she'd read them so many times she almost knew them by heart—but gazed at the pictures. The dark-haired boy, who to her appeared predominantly unhappy, captioned simply "BOY MEDIUM."

_Jonah…_

Wendy's heart and stomach squeezed, as in a grief-stricken ache, and she was suddenly very upset but she couldn't place her feelings or why she was feeling it and it was so—horribly—surreal! _She would be—meeting—that kid, soon. _Would they shake hands? Would she hug him?

…Could they possibly come to love each other?—

_No, no, no, no_! She could never love him. She didn't care if he had been a saint during his life and afterlife. She just would not be able to love him, not as a brother, or friend, or a cousin, or even a second cousin. Maybe they'd be friendly, sure, perhaps they could get along and could be fond of each other enough, but never ever should they love. Wendy vowed to it.

All these sensations, thoughts, feelings passed through her, crashing against her, breaking her bones. It bewildered her. Overwhelmed her, so much that she didn't know how else to vent it but to clutch the paper to her chest and sob.

And so Wendy—tough as nails, mature and collected Wendy—knelt on the floor…and cried.

* * *

**_a/N: Foreshadowing city, that last scene! So I've been reading some 1920s literature so hopefully when I bring Jonah really front and center I'll get his dialogue--and morals--really accurate._**

**_Reviews = free cookies!_**


	5. Two Living Boys

**_A/N: Sorry this chapter took rather long. It's Christmas...I've been busy... Anyway, thanks to all who have reviewed. Hope you enjoy this chapter. I think it's lacking in prose, but it's probably okay, considering all the othe HIC fics practically written in web-chat that get, like, 50 reviews per chapter... -rolls eyes-_**

* * *

Jonah sat nonchalantly on the edge of his hospital bed, staring down at his hands. It was so bizarre, being alive, physical, sensitive. He could touch. And feel. If he touched something cold, he would feel cold. If he touched something hot, like fire, he'd…

He knew all too well what _that_ would do.

He quickly shook the thought away and lifted his right hand up closer to his eyes, examining his fingernails, and recalled that he'd clipped them just two days before he died.

_Mr. Aickman tossed the clippers at him. "They're getting rather long, my son," he said, with an ugly, sadistic grin. "It's bad enough for my poor clients that you crush their fingers in your iron grasp, as if you need to hold on to something while in pain, just like you clung to your mama when you were a young kid getting your vaccine shots..."_

_His mother… Jonah's face burned. Oh, if he could only muster the strength and courage to run up and hit that disgusting "mentor" of his. He'd scratch and bite, and when he got to put his hands on Mr. Aickman's neck…_

_"Ah, anyway," the mortician continued, "they don't need you slicing their palms open with those long kitty-cat claws along with it."_

A dry, yet warm, hand touched the top of Jonah's head. He gasped, then brought his gaze up to see Peter with an open, concerned smile.

"Hey, sport," Peter said. "Didn't mean to scare you. Must've been deep in your thoughts."

Jonah nodded. "Hello, Peter." Part of him didn't really appreciate how Peter called him 'sport.' It was like he was trying to be Jonah's new dad, even though Jonah's real father had never called him that. He then took note of the clipboard and pen in Peter's hand. "What is it?" he asked.

Peter sat down on the bed next to Jonah and uncapped his pen. "I wanted to ask you some questions. You know, just the silly old official stuff."

"Okay…" Official stuff. Jonah could handle that, he figured. He just hoped they didn't ask him about what had occurred that night. And all the other…nights. Matt had informed them all they needed to know about that.

"How much do you remember about your…_previous life_?" Peter stared at him with an anxious, uncomfortable look. Jonah understood; he wasn't supposed to have a previous life. He wasn't supposed to be alive. And interrogating someone on their _previous life_ had to be eerie, nerve-wracking. Especially when the person you're questioning had been the spirit responsible for hurting and nearly tearing apart your family, and almost killing your son. Jonah knew that his curing Matt was the only reason that kept the Campbells from potentially hating him.

He sat and thought for a long while, remembering all he could. His early childhood memories had faded some. Faces had become blurry. Names perched on the tip of his memory but he couldn't quite match people to them anymore. But, miraculously, he held on to the most important things, the memories he didn't think he could go on without. If he closed his eyes and shut the world out far enough, he could feel his mother's kiss still damp and warm on his forehead as they bid good-bye in front of the mortuary. He could feel other people's kisses, too, but with those kisses came an enormous rush of guilt along with them, so he tried to push the memories back.

"Yes," he said. "I can remember quite a bit…so why do you ask?"

"I wanted to see if you remember some things. You know, official stuff. Nothing too personal."

"Okay…like what?"

"Your last name? Was it Aickman?" Peter's pen hovered at the ready over a dotted line on the paper.

Jonah shook his head. "No, Aickman was not my father," he said firmly. _Though he liked to think of it that way, the screwy bastard. _"My surname was Herrell. H-E-R-R-E-L-L." Peter scribbled it down on the dotted line, each letter resting upon its own section of the line. "Perhaps you'll want my middle name, too?"

"Mm-hm."

"William."

"And you'll want to continue being Jonah William Herrell?"

"What other options might I have?" Yes, of course he wanted to keep his name; he just was curious to know what other choices they had possibly laid out for him. He would stay loyal to his family's name, the one he inherited from his father and was supposed to carry on to his own family…but now he had no desire to marry…the women of the modern day were so _unfit_…

"Well, Aickman or…I guess, Campbell."

Jonah widened his eyes. "Campbell? You would let me take your family's name?" He thought they didn't like him, or at least weren't crazy for him. Yet they would allow him to walk around with their name?

"Yes. I'll explain why when you give me your answer." Peter appeared horribly uncomfortable, as if the news about the surname would cause Jonah to go into some psychotic frenzy and embark on a Capone-esque murder rampage! He just wished that they would try to at least not _look_ terrified of his once-ghostly figure.

"I'll keep Herrell. Now tell me."

----

Peter paused, and watched the kid bite his lip and draw his knees to his chest. Jonah hadn't been Aickman's son; just an employee, an apprentice. Which meant he'd had a family. Well, who knew if they'd been a _family_ (perhaps that was why he lived full-time with his "boss?") but he'd had a mother to birth him and he possessed a Y chromosome that hadn't come from the local mortician. He'd gotten those blue eyes from _somewhere_ outside the funeral home…which made him even more of a mystery…

"Well?" Jonah asked, voice quivering. His head was probably flooding with nervous, terrified theories of the news Peter bore for him. Peter considered if maybe his actual message could turn out to be more horrifying than what Jonah was thinking of right now.

"When you get released, Jonah…from the hospital…you're—you're coming to live with us."

Jonah's trembling ceased right then, and his shock-widened eyes laid upon Peter with a silent resistance and accusation, yet with the tiniest sliver of hopefulness glowing within the blue irises. They delved into Peter's soul, it seemed. He tried to relax himself by remembering that he had blue eyes, too, but in no way could his dull shade stand against the color of the former spirit's. _His eyes are lighter and brighter than the summer sky_…and they held the power to stick poetic thoughts in Peter's mind, he quickly observed.

He blinked and glanced over the top of Jonah's head, breaking the eye contact that was just too creepy. "You know you have to go somewhere. And given the options as to where you could go…there's just no other way. I think this way would actually be easiest for you." The boy lowered his gaze to the floor and sighed in defeat. "Hey, at least you know the house."

"I've been stuck wandering 'bout the same floor plan for over sixty years," Jonah said, a bit harshly. The more Peter spoke with him, the more he began to notice that the seventy-six-year-old teenager had a rather thick, olden-timed accent. He had a tendency to sometimes drop vowels, other times elongate them, to exaggerate the 'aw' sounds and oftentimes he used slang words that were so ridiculously 1920's ("That doctor's _cheaters_ are distastefully huge, though he probably thinks they make him a right _sheik_.") that Peter had to suppress a smirk. It was no laughing matter, really, if the kid talked like someone's grandfather. But they'd have to work that out later.

"Hey," Peter hesitantly patted Jonah's shoulder, "you'll be okay. I'm sure you'll settle in to this life just fine. You're a tough kid."

"Your entire family is frozen terrified of me," Jonah murmured. "They—Why, I'm sure they hate me for what I did. I scared them, with the lights…the doors…even the things I didn't do, like the cuts on Matt's body…I know they'll horrified by me." His voice broke on the word _horrified_. Peter hoped the kid wasn't going to cry.

He didn't.

Like Peter said; Jonah was tough.

It took Peter quite a long while to convince the boy that he was going to be fine, that even if the family would be somewhat hesitant at first, they would still accept him and eventually he would be able to trust them like they were his blood relatives. The thing Dr. Campbell did not mention was love. He knew the circumstances. He dared not even glance at that line, nonetheless cross it.

"…Okay, then…" Jonah whispered. He made no eye contact but fiddled some with the hospital blanket, twisting it between his fingers. His lip _did_ in fact give a vulnerable twitch then, but still, no tears.

"All right." Peter looked over his clipboard. "Oh—I almost forgot," he gasped.

"What is it?" Jonah asked, in an exhausted voice that simply _pleaded_ for no more. Not today.

"I almost forgot to ask your birthday."

He paused, then said, slowly, "The twenty-ninth of December, 1910."

"December 29, 1970 it is," Peter announced.

----

_And true it is, sources have confirmed, that Hayes was an acquaintance of renowned boy medium, whose name is Jonah, although his last name has not been revealed. _

_Could the missing Jonah have anything else to do with this new mysterious death?_

Wendy read the words over and over again. She was a slave to Jonah's past, it seemed. She had to figure this out before she lost her very sanity.

She approached the librarian, the typical old lady with a pearl necklace and large bifocals. "Um," she stuttered over some words, "do you have Goatswood High School annuals? Like, really old ones?"

"Depends on how old," the librarian croaked. "We keep 1920 through the present, in your favorite little Town History section with all the newspapers."

Wendy smiled politely. "Thank you," she said, and ducked away. It was bothersome that she was around the library enough that even the sleepy, ignorant librarian knew where she spent most of her time. 1920 through present would be okay. If Virginia, aged sixteen, would have been a junior in 1927, Wendy could hope to find her picture in that yearbook, or at least her sophomore photo in the 1926 edition.

No wonder she had trouble finding the yearbooks. They were crammed in a small corner of a very narrow aisle. The Town History section tended to be a little dark and dreary. Wendy noticed that the older ones were considerably thinner than the modern ones as she ran her fingers along the editions, searching for the right year… 1922, 1923, 1924—

1928.

She knitted her eyebrows. '25, '26, and '27 were all gone. Perhaps already checked out by some reminiscent elderly person seeking to remember his or her good ol' high school years in the Roaring 20s.

Well, then, she would have to wait. Maybe she could find something more in the newspapers…

She travelled a few aisles over, to a more open area, and randomly selected a file from mid 1926. Headline: _Farmers Predict Successful Autumn Harvest._ The second page was full of advertisements and birth announcements. _A girl to Earl and Loretta Campbell, 7 lbs and 11 oz. _Campbell is a really common name, though, so Wendy hardly flinched. This was the point where Wendy would start skimming, very quickly, the pages a blur as they flew past her eyesight on the screen. She stopped after every few pages, to check she hadn't potentially missed anything informative. Nothing. More pages…

Nothing…

She slowly clicked to the next page. Next page.

_Local Teen Girl a Musical Wonder. _

Wendy was about to check into the article, for the girl pictured next to the small blotchy words looked rather familiar, but then she became aware of warm, curious breath on the back of her neck…

----

Matt wandered down the hallway. He did a double-take to make sure the coast was clear before slinking into his father's study.

He'd heard his mother on the telephone just a few minutes beforehand, which had triggered the inquisitiveness he'd been feeling all along and set it free, like a bursting fish tank, and it flooded his mind.

"Of course he's going to be a little nervous about it, Peter, but God, I—I just never expected that he'd assume that about us. Of course we don't hate him!" Sara's voice had risen and she cooed out her sympathy. Matt's heart leapt. She was right. How could they? Jonah had saved Matt. But somehow the thought had to have gotten put in Jonah's head, and it made Matt's mind race. It all seemed perfect. He found things Sara had misplaced, tidied up Mary's room just as Sara was about to scold her for being messy…Matt wasn't really sure what Jonah had done for Billy and his dad, but he most certainly hadn't bothered them…so where could Jonah had picked up on anything negative?

Then he'd heard that Jonah was set to come "home" tomorrow.

But Matt then realized that, with what was mentioned about Jonah's insecurity about the family, he couldn't wait that long to see his paranormal partner in human, human form. He wanted to visit him in the hospital before then.

So he snuck into his father's study to try and find out where they had him.

He brushed his hand along stacks of papers and file folders, business cards taped to the desk near the phone for convenience. Reverend Popescu's card was there. Matt swallowed. That confirmed his suspicion that Rev. P had been the one heading the ritual. Matt couldn't think of any other priests who would actually do something like that for the family or for science.

But there had to be an address somewhere…

There was an open envelope, with the letter stuck back inside. It was simply labeled, _Dr. Campbell, from Dr. Reeves & Blake. _Matt discreetly removed the letter and unfolded it. Scribbled upon the plain white paper:

_Dr. Campbell:_

_We have him in the Sunbrook Hospital in the neighboring town of Bourdan, CT. It is a very small hospital and he's in room 142, down a fairly secluded and heavily guarded hall. It'll look suspicious but nobody will know for sure what's going on. We feel we can get through Phase 2 of the recovery with no trouble or information leaked to the public._

_Your colleagues,_

_Dr. H. Blake and Dr. Thomas Reeves._

Matt's basketball team had played Bourdan High just the previous week. Goatswood won, of course—but anyway, the bus had passed that hospital on the way to their school, and Matt had observed the sign. He figured if he got there before nightfall—it was only a fifteen minute drive—he could find the hospital without much difficulty.

He put the letter back and waited for the right moment to slip out of the study again.

"Mom, I'm going to go hang out with Carrie. Be back later…by, say, nine?"

Sara thought for a moment. "Alright, sweetie, it's Saturday. Drive careful."

----

Matt pulled into the parking lot of Sunbrook Hospital. He was getting anxious, and his fingers trembled slightly as he gripped the steering wheel. He took a few moments to gather his head and test his legs, just in case he was nervous enough to become faint, before heading up to the large, intimidating sliding glass doors just like the ones he'd met all too often in earlier years.

Rooms 130-150. Matt followed the arrow to his right. He met the security guards halfway down the hall. He wasn't worried about what he would say to Jonah if or when he got to see him tonight; he decided he'd wing it and let his instincts take over.

"I'm sorry, son," one of the guards said to him, "but there's only one room occupied down the rest of this way, and it's being used for purposes we cannot disclose. You've probably got the wrong hallway."

"No," insisted Matt, "I'm actually the _son_ of one of the scientists. The scientist who came up with it all. Go ahead. Ask him. I'm his son," he challenged with a bratty teenager attitude.

"Matt!" Peter called, rushing over to the guards and Matt. "What are you doing here? How did you find us?"

"I figured it out. If he wasn't in one of the Goatswood hospitals, he must be here, I thought. I looked for the hallway that looked all top-secret spy-stuff like in the movies. And here it is."

A long pause stretched out before them. Peter sighed.

"…I wanna see him, Dad," Matt said softly.

"And you couldn't wait until tomorrow? For God's sake, Matt…"

"No, I couldn't," he pleaded. "Just let me see him. Please, Dad. Please."

His dad considered this. "If—and _only if_, Matt—he agrees to it. Which I'm rather unsure of. He's…feeling kind of rotten today." Matt winced back at the use of the word _rotten_ in association with newly reincarnated Jonah. "Oh, I—I said that wrong. But you know what I mean."

"Sure."

The father and son walked down the hall to 142. Peter opened the door a small crack. "Jonah?" Matt struggled to hear a voice respond, but only his dad was able to catch Jonah's soft voice that Matt remembered from the visions he'd had.

_Sir?..._

The only non-screamed word he'd ever heard out of him, not counting the whimpering and panting from the séances, and certainly not including the ghastly, inhuman gurgling from his ghost form.

"You have a visitor, if you're feeling up to it…" his father said. "It's—it's Matt…Yeah, he wants to see you…Okay." He turned and opened the door for Matt. "You're lucky, kid. He said yes." This made Matt so incredibly relieved he had to choke back a little cry.

He pushed past his father and entered the room.

He froze.

Dear God.

Jonah stood looking out the window, out into the parking lot with a forlorn expression on his familiar pale face. He wore 80's style pajamas that just look so sickly _wrong_ on him. _Ugh, no, no, _Matt thought, _put him back in those old-timey suspenders. This isn't right for him…_

Jonah turned from the window and stared at him with those damn celestial eyes.

Matt couldn't even choke out the word "Hi." He was at a loss for speech. And Jonah was, too. Robotically, he took a step closer. Jonah repeated the movement, and then they were close enough to slowly reach out and touch their fingertips. Both boys shuddered and drew their hands back.

"_Matt," _Jonah whispered.

_"Jonah."_

"It's been—it's been a rather long time."

"No, we've never been able to do this, not like this," Matt stuttered, recalling the "Two Dead Boys" rhyme.

The boys extended their hands once again. Matt gripped Jonah's warm, clammy hand and shook.

----

_And they were just two living boys…_


	6. Sixty Four

_**A/N: This chapter is basically like Haunting in CT Puppet Pals In: Medium Angst! But I hope the Jonahgirls blush/squee at least once or twice here...Beware: angst... :)**_

* * *

_Local Teen Girl a Musical Wonder. _

Wendy was about to check into the article, for the girl pictured next to the small blotchy words looked rather familiar, but then she became aware of warm, curious breath on the back of her neck…

She whirled around in her seat. Her eyes locked with a pair of greenish-grey irises. There stood a high school-age boy, shrinking away apologetically. He had a tangled mess of auburn curls piled higher on his head than wide, and a little dusting of facial hair on his chin that didn't go with the nerdy boyishness of the rest of him.

"I'm—really sorry…I'm sorry I—um—disturbed you," he tripped and tumbled over his words. "It's just that—that girl." He pointed to the screen, his dirty fingernail resting over the center of the girl's face. "I—Well, see, I live in this old house. And I found some stuff in the attic…" The boy reached inside his backpack and removed a beat-up cheap cardboard folder and took out some pictures. "And I think that's my girl that you're reading about…Well, I shouldn't say _my girl_, that sounds kind of sick, but anyway she used to live in my house—"

"Wait. Slow down—" Wendy said, a little intrigued by this kid.

He finished, "—and I found her diary and I think she died. I like to research, too."

Wendy stared. It took a while for the brain signal _Major Breakthrough _to reach her entire body and conscience. "Really?" she curiously squinted her eyes and tilted her head.

The boy nodded. "Oh—hey, I should introduce myself. My name's Luke Belmonte. Hayes House."

She shook his hand. "Wendy Asher. I stay with my aunt and uncle at the Aickman Funeral Home."

Luke's mouth fell open, revealing braces. "Aickman…whoa." He gave an impressed whistle. He'd obviously heard about the place, and with all the press that had flocked around the story, who hadn't? "Intense," he breathed. Then his eyes flew open. "Wait! Aickman…Aickman…You struck a light bulb, Wendy Asher…" He set the folder and photos on the desk, sat next to her, and once again dug through his schoolbag and took out a thick leather-bound book with hideously, gorgeously yellowed pages. He gently flipped through the fragile-with-age papers, and Wendy took note of the beautiful antique-y script in which the entries were written.

"See, in this diary," Luke explained in a matter-of-fact way, "she—Virginia—doesn't exactly tell events in her life …They're like a series of letters, all to the same person. Sometimes there are even multiple entries per day. She almost filled the whole thing up."

"Wow…" Wendy said. "But she doesn't mention any names?"

"None. She just addresses the person as 'you.' She mentions some friends, like here, _'Daisy misses you, too,' _and _'If only you were here to teach that Melvin a lesson,' _but other than that, no names. I can hardly even tell if the person she's writing to is male or female."

Luke had taken on a very scholarly, well-rounded tone. Wendy sort of liked it…

He carefully skimmed more pages. "I'm trying to find where she says 'Aickman.' Hold on…"

While he searched, Wendy sifted through the photographs. God, Virginia was pretty. Not obvious, sexy pretty like the movie stars of that era, but just…cute. She had a wide smile and dramatic brown eyes that hardened when serious but sparkled when she grinned, and her wavy hair was bobbed, of course, loyal to the timeframe. There was a picture with her mouth delicately hanging open and her hands dreamily placed on her chest, as if singing, and another of her standing on tip-toe with her one arm over head in a ballet pose.

That explains why the _Local Teen Girl _was something of a _Musical Wonder._

It was easy to tell right then that she shouldn't have died.

Wendy's throat tightened, and she had to put the pictures down and look away. "Is it a big house?" she asked, determined to distract herself.

"Pretty big…a little smaller than yours. Well kept. I'd say they were upper-middle class. But in some other photos at home that I think are too precious to put in the folder, the people she's with, she liked to hang out with the super-elite, the upper-upper class. Especially boys." Luke smiled a little. Wendy bit her lip.

_Then why would she have anything to do with a scraggly mortician-in-training/medium?_

Luke closed the diary and shook his head. "Damn. I can't find it. Her handwriting's just so small and fancy…But I just _know_ she said something about Aickman once."

"I have a theory," Wendy murmured, hesitantly. "From the Aickman standpoint."

"Shoot," he urged her.

"I think…maybe your girl knew my guy. It even says in the article about her death."

"_Your guy_? Who's that?"

She took out her own old-house-research folder and pulled out the few photos she'd kept with her that weren't destroyed in the fire, and the newspaper articles she'd found. "His name is Jonah. He worked as an apprentice at the mortuary. And he was a medium," she said as Luke skimmed through the papers.

Luke eyed the picture of Jonah seated next to Ramsey Aickman in the infamous _A Case of Materialization _article. "And why would Virginia have any association with _him_? He looks creepy. I guess a medium who works with dead bodies _is_ kind of creepy. She doesn't say anything about a Jonah in her letters."

She handed him the newspaper printing about Virginia's "suicide" just as he finished reading the _Séance of Death! _article. "They're acquaintances, according to this Lucy Anne," she insisted. "Or…_were_, I guess…But notice the dates. Virginia's death took place in my house just three days after that deadly séance…in my room," she added in a whisper.

"Well, if the séance was deadly, and this kid was the medium, doesn't that kind of make him up for murder? That's why he fled. He killed them. Probably killed Virginia, too—"

Wendy put her hand up. "No. Luke, I know it's really easy to assume that, but that's not how it happened. I guess you could say Jonah's like the most innocent _bad guy_ the world has ever known. It turns out that…" and she explained the whole story, from being forced to perform necromancy on bodies to curing her cousin's cancer. She couldn't believe she was sticking up for that hideous burnt ghost that had been watching her sleep.

"Dear God…" Luke mumbled. "That's horrible. I mean, it really changes one's opinion…but it still doesn't explain how they knew each other."

"I know. And that's what we need to find out if we want to put this together."

"Romeo and Juliet?" Luke offered.

Wendy had considered this, but it put an ugly churning feeling inside her gut so she refused to think about it. "Maybe…"

----

The following morning, Jonah awoke by Peter nudging his shoulder. "Hey, sport," he said as Jonah groaned and opened his eyes, "better rise and shine, kid. You're coming home today."

That scared the drowsiness right out of him. Jonah sat straight up and tossed the blankets off his legs. Peter held a pile of neatly folded clothing. "You'll need to get dressed. They're…hand-me-downs from Matt…hope you don't mind, if that's not too, um, strange. We'll get you your own soon. These might be a little big, especially in the waist."

Jonah took the clothes and unfolded the blue striped tee-shirt, and held it against his chest. It would fit on him like a stage curtain. He ran his finger along the texture of the denim jeans. He gaped in horror at the underpants.

"Not like you're used to?" Peter asked, somewhat quietly. Jonah shook his head, all too aware that he'd just have to get used to it whether he liked it or not.

Peter then left Jonah to his privacy. Thankfully, it all went on just like his old clothes did; the pants buttoned and zipped where nature intended, and the shirt pulled over his head like the plentiful collection of sweaters he once had back at home.

"Yes, yes," Peter mumbled when he reentered the room, "we'll need some smaller clothes for you, won't we?" Jonah noticed it looked like Peter had something in his hand which he hid behind his back. "Now…I'm sure neither of us will like this part…but I'm afraid you'll need a physical exam before we can discharge you."

Jonah knew what a physical exam was; he'd had one just before he went off to work. He did not want some doctor looking and feeling him over, especially knowing that the doctor would be staring in awe, because this kid they were pressing their cold stethoscope to was supposed to be dead.

He protested, "But—but why would you? You've been monitoring me nonstop for days now! My heart and blood pressure are fine, my movements are fine, I feel fine! If you must know, I'll just tell you that I never smoke or drink, and I've never had sexual intercourse, but you could guess that! I'm sure it's all fine and dandy in the land down south!" He blushed at this, but continued pleading, "Oh, good Lord, Peter, don't make me do this!" he cried dramatically.

Peter sighed. "I know you're probably all fine. But it needs to be done, to double-check and for documentation, and you must if you wish to go to school. So let's just get this over with…" he revealed what he'd kept hidden behind his back, a clear plastic cup with a dark grey lid screwed on top. Jonah's stomach dropped. "…starting with a urine sample."

----

_November, 1926._

"_Your turn for Dr. Edmondson, Jonah Herrell," said the nurse with a thick Dixieland accent. She led him down a long, medical-green-colored hallway that got colder and colder the farther they went down it—they stopped at the end of the hallway. Jonah shivered and had goose bumps up and down his arms._

_… "So, going away to work, are you?" asked Dr. Edmundson. He pressed the freezing stethoscope to Jonah's bare chest._

_Jonah contained his gasp against the cold. "Yes."_

_"What kind of work, may I ask?" _

_"Mortuary…" he could barely squeeze the word out, for he knew the worst part was about to dawn._

_"Wow. Must be a tough, strong-willed young man, then," exclaimed Dr. Edmundson. "Now turn your head and cough…"_

----

"Ready to go, now, sport?" Peter asked, as if his young patient had a choice.

Jonah stepped out into the hallway and gazed around. He hadn't seen very much beyond his hospital room. It was all white and stainless steel. The doors were painted a robin's-egg blue and were labeled with silver numbers.

"Okay." He followed his "foster dad" down the hall and out to the parking lot. Peter had dark-ish hair and blue eyes—Jonah wondered if, to the people they passed in the lobby, they looked like biological father and son. _People would always tell him he looked like his mother… _

He also hoped it did not strike the pedestrians odd that he glanced around, and walked slowly, taking in as much of the modern world as he could in one walk. Televisions were everywhere, telephones. Technology wrapped around every corner. Jonah's head spun for a moment. _So this is what the world did while he wasn't looking…_

As they approached the glass double doors, before they even got close to them, the doors swiftly slid open, all on their own! Jonah gasped and jumped back. "What was that, Peter! How do they do that?"

"They're called automatic doors," the scientist said. "They're everywhere—in supermarkets, hospitals, shopping malls…See, they have this technology where they sense someone coming, and it causes the doors to come open by themselves. _Pretty nifty_, huh?"

"_They're the bee's knees_," Jonah deadpanned, irritated at the use of his era's lingo.

Then they stepped out of the building into the blazing, unusually intense October sunlight. Jonah's head split. He cast his arm over his eyes and moaned. He hadn't been out of that dark basement in over sixty years…He only liked to gaze out of his hospital window in the evening and kept the curtains shut during the day. Now he met the unforgiving sun for the first time in decades, and it drilled straight through his eye sockets.

Peter stopped and they stood on the sidewalk, Jonah's hands covering his face, until Peter said, "It's all right, Jonah. The sun went behind a cloud for a moment. See if you can open your eyes now." Jonah removed his hands and gradually lifted his eyelids open. He flinched some and little black dots hopped around his vision, but after a while it didn't hurt.

The two continued walking out into the parking lot. Jonah pored over all the different cars in wonder. He pointed at a short, boxy, maroon sedan and said, "_That's_ what Chevrolet is making these days?"

"Yup. Hey, I've got a Buick. Did you have a Chevy?"

Jonah shook his head but grinned for the first time that day. "My family owned a Cadillac," he said with little effort to contain his boasting tone.

----

"Hop in," Peter said. He made a move to help Jonah figure out how to open the door but by then the kid was already sitting calmly inside. "All right-y, then…" Peter muttered to himself. He got in on the driver's side.

"Ah, see, Jonah," he then said, "there's this thing called a seatbelt…it's this right here…and it raises one's chance of living if we were to get in an accident." He reached over and took a moment to show Jonah how to fasten his own.

"Oh—okay—that's interesting." Jonah looked up at him sheepishly when Peter brought the belt over the boy's lap. "I see—I see now how it's done. Let's just go now, please," he said. It was when he got uncomfortable, Peter noticed, that the politeness really started flowing from the kid's demeanor. Otherwise he acted exceedingly shy and quiet, except for the few shining moments where he would come off as somewhat arrogant, with a sort of patriotism for his native timeframe.

"So you've been in a car before?" Peter said as he backed out of the parking space.

"Yes."

"This shouldn't be too bad, then…"

But it was. Peter pulled out onto the highway and headed down the road, speeding up to just the limit and passing a few cars. After a minute or so, he glanced over at his vintage passenger. Jonah timidly curled his fingernails into a death grip on the seat. His face scrunched up as if bracing for pain, and was shiny with nervous sweat. His chest shook with shallow breath.

First theorizing that the kid just felt sick, Peter slipped his hand under Jonah's bangs and felt his moist forehead. "Feeling okay, buddy?"

"Wh-why are we going so fast?" he panted.

"We're going the speed limit, Jonah."

"But everyone's driving so fast. It's no wonder we have these things." He patted the seatbelt.

"You gonna be sick?" Peter asked. Jonah shook his head and wiped some sweat. "How fast are you used to going?"

"About ten to fifteen miles per hour…twenty-five tops, that one time. And _that_ was exhilarating." He swallowed hard and glanced at the driver questioningly. "How fast are we going now?"

Peter hesitated before telling the truth, "Sixty-four."

Jonah squeezed his eyes shut and let out a sickly moan. "Oh…God…"

"Are you sure you're not going to throw up? 'Cause we can pull over," said Peter. Again Jonah answered the negative. "That's why we needed to do the exam. You just don't know about you. We've never had a case like you. You may think that since you made it this far, out of the coma, you're all ready to go again, but you're wrong. You're so fragile, Jonah."

"But you said—" he leaned his head back and gulped for some more oxygen, "you said that I'd been restored to the exact moment before I died. The millisecond before the fire flicked on. And I was okay then—really, I was…"

Peter widened his eyes. How could he even insist that? "No, you weren't, kid. You turned out to be in pretty bad shape when we looked you over. You were noticeably skinny and weak, physically exhausted, overworked. Not to mention you even had a UTI, and most of all you were pretty dehydrated. That's why you woke up with IV's. Antibiotics and fluids. And don't pretend. You had to have felt sick."

Jonah was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "I guess I didn't feel the greatest."

"To hell you didn't." A rage abruptly rose within Peter's blood. "Ah, let's just say that old mortician is lucky he wasn't the one reincarnated. I would beat the hell out of him, then nail his ass with child abuse and necrophilia and whatever else I could find, and make sure he—"

"Peter—stop—please…" Jonah suddenly cried out, his voice broken and raspy. Amongst his perspiration-soaked face, a small tear was visible on his right cheek. "He took good care of me. Honest. I let _myself_ go…Pull—pull over!" Peter jerked the car over onto the shoulder of the road. He frantically showed Jonah how to release the seatbelt, and the kid barely had enough time to open the door and lean out before he vomited, rather dramatically, and cried some while doing so.

Jonah heaved himself back in the vehicle and did his own seatbelt this time. Peter finally understood what it must've been like for Sara, carting a chemo-ridden Matt around, listening to his musings about death and stopping every other mile to throw up.

"All right, kid," he said gently. "I'm gonna give you two choices: either I can take you back to the hospital, or when we get home you're gonna ignore the welcome home festivities and the first thing you do is lie down and get some rest."

"Wouldn't I…just be lying down…and resting anyway…at the hospital?" Jonah breathed. "Just take me…to the house. Go home."

And so they did just that. Jonah rested his head on the cool glass and moaned, "Go home…go home…go home…" over and over for a minute or two. And Peter told him equally repetitively how sorry he was for getting angry at Aickman. He was still mad at the old creep, but he had to get Jonah to calm down.

They pulled on to the street that the house was located on. "Almost there, buddy."

----

Sara wrapped her jacket more tightly around herself. The wind blew at her hair, managing to get to her though she stood on the porch and leaned against the front door. She looked up attentively at the crackling sound of the gravel driveway underneath car tires. Peter sloppily parked onto the driveway, got out and rushed over to the other side of the car, and half-carried a frail, astonishingly ill Jonah out of the car up the path.

Sara gasped. "Oh—dear, Jonah!" She covered her mouth with her hand. "Peter, what's wrong with him?"

"Didn't like the car ride too well. Fastest he ever went in his lifetime was twenty-five, and here I was pulling sixty-four down the highway and he freaked out. He threw up and got a little emotionally upset."

Sara took Jonah's hot, clammy arm and attempted to balance his body against her. "It's okay, sweetie, you're here now—"

Peter shook his head and reclaimed the unstable teenage form. "No, Sara, I've got him. What you can do to help is calm the kids and make sure they don't gawk while I help him inside. I'll just let him crash on our bed until we can figure out where he'll stay and get his own bed set up." Sara scurried inside and did as she was told. Only Matt protested against wandering off and not to pay any mind to the chaos surrounding the new arrival, which could be expected. He refused to head to his room and fought with her until Peter walked in with poor, sick Jonah anyway.

"Jonah!" Matt cried. He dashed over to his father and while Peter had Jonah leaning against him from one side, Matt took his shoulder and supported him from the other.

Jonah looked up at him with a bewildered, pleading expression, yet with a bit of understanding in those eyes. "Matt…"

Sara watched as her husband and son helped him up the stairs. They got him situated, still in his clothes, in the Campbells' bed and with the wastebasket near the edge just in case. He trembled under the blanket, but insisted he wasn't cold. Sara began to stroke his hair until he pushed her hand away.

"You know he's going to have moments like these all the time, for a really long time," Sara told her husband later on while she fixed supper.

"I know. If it gets to the point where he might need meds—"

"He won't," Sara snapped. "You won't give him any. We're not gonna feed him anti-depressants. I think being friends with Matt will help, once he begins to adjust. Matt's got his back, you know that."

"But Sara, his back isn't the only part of him that needs watching…"

* * *

**_ If I got too gory into detail of Jonah's "medical situations" then I apologize. He's human now, unabashedly human..._**

**_And you must unabashedly review...!_**


	7. So Real

**A/N: I'm _so_ sorry that this update almost took a month. This IS going to be somewhat of a Jonah/Wendy and this is the first time they sort of "meet" so I wanted it to be as perfect as possible...it still didn't really turned out like I had hoped but I did my best... And I wanted another touching Matt-Jonah scene at the end, and that took a while. And that's the shining gem of this chapter.**

**Thanks to all those who have been reviewing. It means so much to me that people like my ideas. Thought I'd formally mention that before I start begging for more at the end note ;) Enjoy.**

* * *

_The wind blew through her hair. Her father had the top down on their Touring Car, exposing her to the outside air. They chugged along at fifteen miles per hour._

_"…It'll do you good to have a small holiday, you know that…" Papa was saying. She hardly caught this phrase, for she gazed at the enormous, intimidating brick institution they motored past at that moment. She had experienced such unspeakable horror in that building, but all that horror had _not_ accumulated over time; they were all developed within one incident inside that wretched mental hospital._

_She never guessed they would abandon him like that. It just showed that parents, especially in families of high status, could so quickly turn on their young if they fail to do and act as they'd been taught to glorify the surname. And how the most unlikely person, the seemingly most bitter person in town, would open up and help the desperate child. And the case was so much more extreme than any Scrooge and Tiny Tim scenario. More like a Fitzgerald-esque situation of a violent fall from high social class, and landing at the very bottom with a profound "splat."_

_The asylum disappeared behind them, beyond her now blurred-with-tears vision. She turned back to face forward and tried to hide the grief and sorrow from Papa._

_"See?" Papa said, for her attempts had failed. "You sure could use a vacation, dearest Virginia. He'll be fine."_

_"That's what you said before," she murmured, her throat painfully tightened with the most extreme heartache__—_

----

A furious tickle rose in Wendy's throat and she broke into a coughing fit. She realized she had fallen asleep at only 4:30 with all her lights on and using _This Side of Paradise _as a pillow. How could she have fallen asleep anyway? No-Longer-Dead Kid had arrived, and he was just down the hallway, hopelessly sick, so she'd heard.

Glancing down at her book to make sure she hadn't bent it up too severely, or perhaps drooled on it, she quickly realized: _This Side of Paradise. Classic, essential 1920s literature. _She swallowed. _Had Jonah read this book? That is, if he even knew how to read. _Illiteracy wasn't so unusual back then, and if he was a sixteen-year-old training to be a mortician, then maybe he didn't know. Maybe he was too poor for school, or just chose not to go, or he wasn't allowed to, being a medium and all…and so he wound up at a dead-end (literally) apprenticeship at a mortuary.

She rubbed her temples; she really needed to keep him out of her mind, away from her thoughts, before she developed a bias in the mystery of Virginia Hayes.

After a minute or two of more coughing, she headed out of her room with intentions of getting a glass of water. As she wandered down the hall, she stopped and tip-toed past Sara and Peter's bedroom.

She tried not to think about what it would be like when he crawled out of the room and she met him for the first time outside of the text of an old newspaper or a disturbing photograph of ectoplasm. She barred from her mind the thought of what his voice might sound like—a soft tenor? a warm bass?—or how much taller he would be than her, how thick or small his frame might be. How would he act? How depressed and sick could he actually be at that moment? Matt knew; he'd seen more of him than all the rest of them combined. And he'd already been to see him in the hospital. Perhaps Wendy could wander to the basement and have an informative chat—

Wait. Stop. Don't think about Jonah…Just keep walking.

Wendy continued padding down the hall.

_"Ohh…"_

She abruptly halted, her sneakers making a scuffing noise on the hardwood floor. A moan. She'd heard a moan, from her aunt and uncle's bedroom. A post-pubescent male voice which had unquestionably come from Jonah. Then followed a loud, harsh series of gagging, gasps in between.

The floor disappeared underneath her, the room shifted, and her vision tinted a blue-ish green. Wendy gripped her abdomen. She was listening to Dead Kid throwing up.

Yet, amidst all the resentment, a considerable amount of concern and sympathy hatched inside of her…An indomitable magnetism willed her feet to turn and head back in the direction the Campbells' bedroom. She wrapped her arms around herself and glanced over her shoulder, thinking maybe it was something supernatural, and not a sudden desire to play nurse to Jonah, that tugged her backward.

_I'll go back there and peek in the door, perhaps through the key-hole, _she reasoned. _Hopefully he won't notice me, I'll satisfy my curiosity, and I can continue downstairs and socialize with the sane around here._

So Wendy gave into the tug and sauntered back to the dark-stained door.

The door was latched. She wondered if Jonah had a bat-like sense of hearing that came along with his super medium powers as a sort of package deal. If not, she could probably twist the knob and get a look at him—she'd never seen him in color before, she realized.

She reached out for the knob. _It's not latched anyway!_ So Wendy nudged the door open just a small crack…she tried to peak in very, very, quietly…

Jonah's motionless, presumably sleeping figure suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight up at her.

—"Wendy? Is that you?"

----

Sara had begun setting the table, with Matt's help, while Peter stood leaning against the counter, going through the mail. He flipped through the many white envelopes as if looking for a specific letter.

"Aha," he said, finally.

Sara paid very scarce attention, not on purpose, but because her mind was permanently glued on the boy upstairs. Every time she looked at Matt, she'd see Jonah. The way "those two dead boys" were connected, even in life, she found especially poignant.

After the first haunting was over, they gathered up Jonah's ashes from the reverend, with intentions on doing research, finding his full name, and giving him a proper burial near his family, if applicable.

Once the little mound of gray powder and blackened portion of skull were safely nestled in the Adidas shoe box, Sara couldn't help but gape with misty eyes. She didn't care right then if that boy had been good or evil, if he'd saved her son or almost killed him. If he'd been a medium or a big fraud, a true aspiring mortician or a teenager who'd gotten on the wrong path. She didn't care about any of that. What mattered was that, inside that box, there was a person. A young man who, one way or another, had had a long life ahead of him.

Most of all, there was someone's child. A mother's baby.

Now, Sara looked up at her son once more. What was she going to do?

She felt compelled, in a way, to contact Jonah's real mother somehow, and tell her he was being well taken care of. It sounded crazy, but she wished they could be Two Dead Moms, like their Two Dead Boys…

Across the room, Peter removed a few papers from the envelope he was looking for. He flipped through them.

"What's that, Dad?" Matt asked. Sara noticed he seemed much more interested in his father's work now that he knew what he studied.

Peter seemed to hesitate. "…Paycheck," he said.

An expression of grave, angry realization molded to their son's face. "Paycheck?" he said accusingly. "Paycheck? I suppose you made a bunch of money off of Jonah, didn't you?"

"He's the first reincarnated person on scientific record, ever. It's kind of revolutionary, a huge discovery that, although it has to be kept extremely quiet, is going to change a lot of things in the science world forever," Peter reasoned. "There's somewhat of a reward for that. The reverend got paid, too—"

"How much is it?"Sara asked, to prevent a quarrel from arising.

Peter swallowed. "A—about $1,800,000. It's a revolution, I'm telling you—"

----

Jonah leaned over the edge of his bed and, so composedly, allowed it all to come up and into the wastebasket positioned next to him. He had become an expert at puking, ever since his first successful ectoplasm materialization. For one, vomiting didn't require a quarter as much energy, and wasn't nearly as painful as ectoplasm. And it helped that the stomach contents obeyed the laws of gravity and didn't float upward. And he could _breathe_ in between gags, instead of being nearly suffocated by the protoplasmic stuff. Upchucking was a luxury, compared to materializing the dead.

He let his head drop limply over the edge for a while, to make sure it was all over, before sucking in a breath of precious oxygen and trying to get over the sour taste. When he lifted his head to lay it back on the pillow, he spotted a dark-haired girl, half-hidden behind the door. She was peeking in at him.

He blinked; waited for his vision to focus.

"Wendy? Is that you, Wendy?" he inquired.

She jumped back a little. Jonah felt a heavy mixture of remorse and nervousness course into his blood. He remembered the night he was visiting his old bedroom, making sure he kept himself invisible to the living, but for a moment he faltered and she woke up and saw him. He'd scared her. Poor Wendy. Please go away.

"Uh—hi. I was just—stopping by. To check on you. I heard you weren't feeling well," she stammered. "You okay?" she asked, and Jonah noticed the little spatter of sick on his chin, which he quickly took a tissue to wipe away with. One thing about ectoplasm was that it would clean up after itself.

"I'm fine," he said. His face got hot. He was blushing—actually blushing.

"Are you sure?" She took a step or two into the room. "Is there anything I can get for you? How about a glass of water, to kill the taste?" By now she was all the way into the room and sitting herself on the edge of the bed, just a few inches away from his toes. Jonah fretfully shook his head. He was sure she didn't like him. Sara had probably instructed her to come in and be nice. He just wanted her to go away…

Wendy blushed too then, as if suddenly becoming aware of herself and what she was doing. She looked away. "I'm sorry, Jonah. I just—I have a habit, I guess, from when Matt was sick."

Jonah propped himself up on his elbow, feeling himself relax a little. He felt empathy for her now, understood her reason—he had, after all, witnessed how sick Matt had been, and how much Wendy had cared for her cousin. He asked, his voice soft, "Do you like taking care of people?" Wendy shrugged and nodded. "Maybe you could be a nurse."

"Maybe…" She seemed to have dazed off, caught deeply in her thoughts. "Jonah," —He decided he liked the way she said his name, not stern like Aickman's or condescending like Peter's or sugary like Sara's— "I'm sorry if I stared. It's just so surreal, seeing you. I mean, the only time I ever saw you was…in those newspaper articles…" She swallowed. Neither of them mentioned the other time she'd seen him. "Your eyes…" she murmured.

Jonah took the pressure off his elbow and sat up all the way. "I know. I get that a lot," he said gently.

"God—you're so…_real_," she whispered.

During a time of pause that followed, Jonah considered Wendy, just Wendy in general. Before the fire, he hadn't paid her much mind. She and Billy were the two he never put much effort towards. Matt had obviously been the focal point of his attention, Sara the overprotective mother whose love he knew he could use, Peter who brought back the achingly familiar scenario of an alcoholic father, and Mary the innocent child whom the spirits often preyed on until he stopped them. Wendy snagged his curiosity, though, when he saw her reading _The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke _on the porch one day. He knew she was a studious type, the way she would spend so long reading even the short poems, analyzing them and trying to grip every symbolic meaning. He knew she could help Matt help him, so with a little remorse he let Mary's leg fall through right where the box was.

What he never intended was to scare her…The poor girl had been oblivious to the fact that she slept in what had sixty years ago been his bedroom. Thankfully, or at least for the moment, she didn't seem to be angry with him about it.

"I'm feeling a lot better now," Jonah said.

"I'm glad," said Wendy.

"It was nice properly meeting you, Wendy."

The two smiled at each other. "It was nice meeting you, too, Jonah."

----

Matt slid down the wall so that he was sitting on the floor and peeked around the corner, into the kitchen. Their voices travelled out to him. He was participating in the art of eavesdropping on one's parents. They were discussing the massive amount of money Dad had earned with his breakthrough and what to do with it.

"You do have to admit, Peter," Sara said, "it does seem slightly wrong that you made almost two million bucks off of a boy that hardly wanted to be reincarnated in the first place."

"I know, Sara, I know. But you have to admit that I've hardly ever done anything—especially of this size—just for the money. I did it for the thrill of the breakthrough. And maybe to give this—this poor kid who died too young a second chance…"

Matt's chest gave a hallow squeeze at that. He wished he could go see Jonah.

"…And, you know, we can always put it to good use," Peter continued, "It's not like we're gonna go out and buy a Ferrari or anything. We do have another kid to take care of now, another one to send to college…"

An extremely long pause stretched over the better part of a minute. Then Sara murmured, "Jonah. College." Something in her voice indicated a calm, tired smile. "Only a few years from now. If he chooses to go, anyway."

Peter whispered, "Wow," and there was a rustling noise, of the two coming together for a hug.

Matt's throat tightened, too. So much more than Jonah ever could ever have had…

"You know what, Peter?" Sara whispered, her voice so faint that Matt had to strain to hear her. "I think we could take some of that money and use it to get out of here. Buy a new house. Just think of how much easier it'll be for Jonah if we get out of the place he has so many terrible memories in. and it could be a really nice house, too. No lost secrets, no gruesome pasts, no creepy basements…We could just all move on…" She sniffled. "To think, it was not even five months ago, we moved here, we were scared we were gonna lose Matt, and now look at us. Millionaire scientists, with a reincarnated little ghost boy joining our family…"

—"Little ghost boy?" This voice, also hushed, appeared in front of Matt. He looked up and his gaze locked naturally, magnetically with Jonah's. His heart leapt; not entirely in the same way that Carrie made his heart jump, but still, everything about Jonah caused him to feel an odd, comforting shock. Comforting shock. An oxymoron, like in English class, Matt observed.

"Jonah—How are you? You feeling better—?"

The little ghost boy lowered himself to the floor next to Matt. He pulled his knees up by his chest. "Quite a lot better," he whispered. "You know, it's rude to eavesdrop on your parents…But I do admit, the conversation is very interesting."

"They're talking about getting a new house, Jonah. A new house. Wouldn't that be great? No more smelly old funeral home—" Matt halted his words, appalled with himself. His dad had told him how upset Jonah got when he insulted Aickman. "Look, Jonah, I'm real sorry, I didn't mean it…" he stuttered.

"No, Matt, it's okay." Jonah gave him that open, sincere look of understanding similar to the expression he bore while they were in the graveyard together, that crucial fiery night… "For one, that's about the fiftieth time I've been uselessly apologized to today, and in all honesty, the smell, the bodies—it _was_ rather awful." He smiled, a delicate lifting of the corners of his mouth just dramatic enough to be noticed. Matt had never seen him smile before. He took this milestone as calmly as he could, thanking God that at least he kid knew how to.

"Okay. It's just—well, Dad said you got kind of…I dunno…offended when he acknowledged how Aickman was…I dunno…not taking care of you like he probably should have…"

Jonah's smile disappeared, but he otherwise remained tranquil. "I wasn't feeling well to begin with. And, well, maybe he was sort of right…Maybe Mr. Aickman could've been more considerate, but I—" Jonah's words caught in his throat, and his mouth remained open for a moment or two as he struggled with words. "I'm sixteen, Matt. I wasn't his full responsibility. I sort of just gave up on myself…and the ectoplasm; it harvests fluids and phosphates and what-not from the medium, and that drained a lot out of me…"

Matt set his hand on Jonah's arm. "It's all right—"

Jonah shrugged away from the touch and continued on, "I guess I really don't know who's to blame yet. I don't even know what to think of Aickman. Everyone thinks I should hate him, but I—I can't. He's all—he's all I—" He bit his lip and hugged his knees closer to him. He shook his head. "I've decided I'm going to figure all of that out later."

Matt nodded. "That's right, Jonah. Just deal with things a little at a time." He knew the remainder of the sentence Jonah had stopped himself at. _Aickman was all Jonah had left. _And it tore him apart, really. He wanted to know everything that happened, how Jonah got here. But he would just have to wait. There would most likely be a day where Jonah could open up and tell them everything, but it wasn't now.

"You sound just like your father when you talk like that," Jonah said.

* * *

**A/N: You know what I realized? The name Virginia. The actress who played Sara is named Virginia Madsen. I knew that before but didn't realize it until this chapter "Hey...Virginia... Madsen and Hayes..." Is that cool or creepy?**

**So review, review, for they all keep me going, keep me updating, keep me passionate about my stories. And if I stay passionate, the writing quality is better. :)**


	8. Dinnertime Seance

**_A/N: Sorry for the slow update once again. I had a bad case of block, newspaper to concentrate on, and a bunch of other stuff involving science club and potential dating. Ugh._**

**_So anyway, more Jonah angst....a little shorter chapter compared to what I've been posting, but longer, juicier stuff to come (eep, that sounded weird!). I try to make every part of a chapter mean something to the plot, so nothing happens for no reason. If something seems like filler to you, let me know, and I'll work on my anti-filler skills. _**

**_ALSO - IMPORTANT - watch for the astericked terms (term*) It may be something you don't understand so I'll put an asterick by it and explain it in the endnote. 'Cause there'll be some references and terminology that might be confusing unless I do that._**

* * *

It felt like a séance. No matter how rectangular the table, or how strongly the room smelled of a warm supper, or how casual the clinking of silverware, it still felt like a séance. Jonah sensed all eyes on him. The multiple gazes crushed him, just like before. He glanced downward at his hands nervously gripping his knees, hoping the physical pressure on his legs would lessen the pressure of the family watching him. The place mat in front of him sat empty, the glass in front of him unfilled, untouched.

"Are you sure you don't want to try eating anything, sweetie?" Sara gently asked him. "I know you don't feel well, but…"

He nodded. But then he considered that the nod could mean, yes, he did want something after all, or yes, he was sure he didn't want anything. So he said, "I'm sure," as clearly as he could squeeze out.

"At least something to drink?"

"No, thank you."

Peter cleared his throat. _Ahem. _Jonah took the hint and looked up at him. Peter gestured with his eyes towards the little band-aid on Jonah's arm where the IV had poked him, as a reminder of what would happen if he refused food and drink for too long again.

He rubbed his eyes. He was on the verge of experiencing a negative memory, and he tried with all his mental strength to shun it from his thoughts while putting up with the pressure of everyone—especially the two young children—staring at him.

_Please…please help me…_

_Mommy? Help me, Mama…Save me…_

_What's happening…Leave me alone…Go away…_

It felt so much like a séance, it really did—

"Been a long day, hasn't it, Jonah?" Peter asked. "To think—only this morning you were still in the hospital."

Only that morning, he'd had to _be looked over_ by a doctor, just following the vile, repulsive task of urinating in a plastic cup. The thought of which required him to suppress a loud dramatic moan and simply nod in agreement to Peter's statement. He always felt there was something foul about having all the natural functions of a living person—of course he learned to cherish the pure heartbeat of life after going away to work, yet he still resented the graphic theories of Freud*—that he couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what until he spent sixty years dead, in the Spirit world where existing was about all you did.

"Which reminds me," Peter continued, "that very soon we'll have to take you out to town and get you some of your own clothes, some that are…of a little better proportion to you." Next to Jonah, Matt chuckled over his mouthful of potatoes and nudged Jonah's shoulder.

"Okay," was all he felt he could say. He was rather uneasy about shopping for modern clothes—he'd decided he wasn't fond of the fashions of the 80's. Denim jeans were stiff and itched compared to his flannel and tweed trousers, and the zip made him nervous as opposed to the button. The shirts were slightly more comfortable—no buttons and just the one layer was usually all one needed—but he hated the way he looked in them. The short sleeves exposed most of his bony, vein-y arms, and the simple round color didn't look right around his neck. Most horrid were the shoes. They were often white and had these intricate, flashy, bright-colored designs on them. They were ugly and cheap-looking, in his opinion, and he wondered if simple brown lace-ups were still manufactured and he could get away with wearing them instead.

"And your bedroom. That's also what I wanted to discuss. Where should we put you, Jonah?"

Oh, why wouldn't they just let him space-out and think! It was bad enough they stared at him like a museum exhibit, but they didn't have to talk him into consciously experiencing it…

"Wherever you'd like. It's your house," he said.

"You were here first," said Matt.

Jonah glared at him. "Not really." Matt took a moment to puzzle over that statement, but that baffled look never left his face.

"Well," said Sara, "there aren't any bedrooms left, as you know…someone's going to have to double up. Matt and Billy can share, or Mary and Wendy could move in together so you could have your own space…"

"Mary and Wendy should stay together," Billy spoke up. "I don't want to share a room with Matt _again_, like in our old house."

Mary whined, "No! There's no room for her because of all my toys!"

Billy retaliated to this. Then Mary said something back. Wendy interjected, trying to break off the quarrel, and Matt joined in, and so did the parents, and then everyone was half-yelling and talking over one another and fighting because of _him_, where they would put _him_, where _he_ would stay in a house he loathed in a world and decade he loathed…

The voices, the loud blurry voices jumbled in his head and burned through his ears and grinded in between his eyes, and they all sat gathered around, gathered 'round, and his stomach cramped up in horrible knots and he could feel it rising from his stomach, scraping and scalding his throat like a razor blade on its way up—Sprit wanted to materialize—Spirit wanted the ectoplasm to materialize—

Yes, it felt so much like a séance…

Wendy rose abruptly from her chair and screamed, _"Stop! Everybody just shut up! Can't you guys see__—__it's hurting him!"_

Jonah clenched his teeth and buried his face in his hands, rocking himself back and forth to soothe away the excruciating séance feeling. It had always been a second-nature, self-conscious instinct for him, to conceal either his eyes or his ears when he got upset. He curled his fingers into his scalp and pulled on his hair.

The bickering halted immediately, just snuffed right out, and they were all back to staring at him again. He timidly removed his hands from his eyes, and glanced all around at every single member of the family.

"Jonah," Peter said. But it reached Jonah's ears in Aickman's voice.

His head burst in agony, right between his eyebrows. He saw it. He saw everything—the images he'd been trying to keep out of his mind ever since he woke up in the hospital. Because it was much easier to be dead with a horrible guilt than to live with the remorse. He saw her, watched her, and there was nothing he could do as she took the chemicals out of the closet and screwed off the top—

"Jonah!" Peter said, more firmly. Jonah whiplashed out of his awful memory and glanced fearfully up at him. "That's it. I knew we shouldn't have taken you home today. You weren't ready."

"But—but wouldn't—we can't go back now—c-could we?"

"Of course we could," Peter said. "Of course we could. Would you like that? Wait until you're feeling even more stable—"

----

"No," Matt said suddenly as he tossed his fork with a brutal clank onto his plate and stood, in preparation for a genuine monologue. "You wanna know what I think? I think that I can really relate to Jonah right now. Feeling sick, everyone just staring at you like you sprouted a second head…" He raised his pitch to mock a squeaky, sugary tone, " 'Oh, how about something to eat, so you can just throw it up later on?' 'Maybe you should go to the hospital so you can just lie there and do what you did the last time you were there.' "

"Matt, sit down, sweetie," said his mom, "we're only trying to help…"

Matt refused to sit, even stood a little taller. "Well, love hurts sometimes, Mom. Sometimes trying to help—I mean, it just—makes everything worse." He glanced down at Jonah, who was looking up at him with shocked, almost sad eyes. "Isn't that right, Jonah?" he asked. Jonah bit his lip and shamefully lowered his head without an indication of agreement or disagreement. "And," Matt continued, "how about this? Jonah can stay with me. We're both guys, we're the same age, and come on, we're not exactly strangers."

"Down there, in that basement?" Sara raised her eyebrows. "Would Jonah be okay with that?" She eyed the dark-haired boy skeptically.

Jonah brought his gaze up to Matt again like he was his savior, and nodded fervently. "Yes—that would be nice," he said.

Matt grinned, his irritability melting a little, and patted Jonah's shoulder. "Come on," he said gently, "I think we're both done here. Let's go." With a facial expression that depicted an enormous rush of relief, Jonah stood and followed Matt out into the hallway, both boys eager to get away.

"Thank you," Jonah said with a strong old-fashioned sincerity. "Thank you so much for getting me away. It was beginning to be too much. I considered faking having to be sick, but I thought it'd be rude at the dinner table—"

"Hey, it's no problem, man," said Matt, once they were a little farther out of earshot of the family. "I mean, it's like…I've been there, you know? Where they just stared at me and talked about me like I wasn't even in the room. When I was sick. You saw that, right? You were there."

"Yes I did."

Naturally, instinctively, the Two Living Boys travelled down into the basement. They crossed the grimy white and green-tiled floor. Matt reached for the handle to the embalming room, grinning at Jonah. "This is unlocked, right?" he teased. "And it's average temperature?"

Jonah smiled back and nodded. "It should be." Then his smile disappeared. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm really sorry. About that. I just—I had to spark your curiosity…and the burns…" He swallowed hard.

Matt, too, became serious. He'd figured they'd need to exchange words like this, eventually, to share motives and apologize for misunderstandings until they were on the same wavelength concerning the events, and their bond. "No, it's okay. I'm sure everything you did, you did it for a reason. You weren't trying to scare or hurt us," he insisted.

"I was trying to protect you from the evil spirits."

"Right." It was then that they proceeded into the old mortuary.

Upstairs, the phone began to ring.

Jonah solemnly pursed his lips. "And I'm sorry I was so hideous. I wished I could've looked like myself, with no burns. I'd seen spirits of people who died of gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and their clothes weren't bloodied…I felt it unfair that I had to wander the spirit realm covered in ashen skin and oozing blisters…it made it particularly difficult to convince people that I wasn't evil." He looked Matt straight in the eyes. "You were the first that listened."

Matt wasn't sure how to directly respond to this heartfelt statement at first. So he grinned widely and said, "Hey, it's not like I don't have anything to thank _you_ for."

----

"Wendy, it's for you." Sara handed her the phone. She smirked, "It's a boy. Do you know a guy named Luke?"

Wendy pressed her hand over the speaker and nodded. "Yeah, I do." Then she shrugged passively. "We're friends. Study buddies. We hang out at the library and do homework a lot."

She put the phone to her ear and pressed her hand over the other to block out excess noise. "Yeah, hey, Luke."

No hello, how are you, or anything of such. Luke jumped right into it. "I made a discovery today," he stated, sounding slightly mournful, "that may complicate our quest a little. You see, I had a moment of genius and was looking in the _basement_ this time instead of the attic, and I found another old, rotting cardboard box. Okay. So inside that cardboard box was a jewelry box. And inside _there_ was—" he paused, for dramatic effect and to catch his breath, "—a necklace. Really gorgeous, antique-y, might even be genuine gold. On the back of the pendant, engraved _real_ small, are two sets of initials. VLH and MTP. Virginia Louise Hayes. Those other initials sound familiar?"

"Oh—no, I don't think so." Wendy widened her eyes in shock, though she knew Luke couldn't see her. "Well, who is that? It doesn't exactly mean that Jo—" She immediately halted herself. She was on the phone in the middle of the kitchen, where Sara and Peter and Billy were still gathering up, washing, and drying the dishes. It was most likely in her best interest that she not mention Jonah by name. "It doesn't exactly mean that she was never involved with…you-know-who. Maybe it was a friendship necklace from Mary…Tamara…Something-or-other?"

"…The pendant is heart-shaped, Wendy," Luke said gravely.

"Oh…Well, I've seen plenty of heart-shaped friendship pendants in the store. It means the girls love each other as best friends." Of course she hadn't experienced a friendship token- exchange since the fifth grade…Which was a sad story in and of itself that she'd rather not think about. Anyway, she hoped that her conversation still sounded like idle gossip to her family, should they be snoopily listening in.

"Wendy? Hey, I was wondering…I found some other stuff that might be helpful, and two heads are better than one…maybe you'd like to come over and we can figure something out…the night is still young, it's Saturday and we're both dateless nerds obsessed with stalking these two dead kids…"

The one kid wasn't dead _anymore_…Wendy realized she had to keep acting like Jonah was dead, like he was simply a figment of the past that she felt compelled to "research."

"Um, okay—let me ask. Hold on a second." She covered the speaker once more and turned to her aunt. "Sara, can I go visit Luke? We have a—um—research project we're working on."

Sara considered for a long moment, her lips pressed in a worrisome line. Wendy knew she was skeptical about sending her teenage niece to a teenage boy's house on a weekend night. "What kind of research project? Is Matt doing anything similar?" Well, to be honest, Wendy thought, if Sara was implying _that_ kind of research, sex ed research… Wendy often suspected maybe Matt and Carrie's relationship went a little beyond the making out in the movie theater.

"History. And he's probably not. It's for extra credit. Matt has an aversion to overachieving anywhere besides the basketball court."

"True, honey. Very true. Okay. Just be safe, all right?"

"I'll be sure to."

----

"Welcome to my comfy abode," Luke said as they climbed the front steps. "Hayes House. Designed and built from 1908 to 1909 by H & H Architects, occupied by the Warren Hayes family until shortly after the stock market crash in 1929, then by various unimportant occupants until the Thomas Belmonte family moved in during the year 1985."

"Wow," Wendy giggled. "You've done your research, that's for sure."

They kicked off their shoes in the entry way and proceeded into the living room. "It's beautiful," she murmured. The room was packed full of antique furniture and knick-knacks, the walls clad with framed old photographs, and gorgeous cherry-finished hardwood floors. She tried not to envision Jonah perched upon the antique floral-patterned couch, Virginia in his lap cheerfully snuggling up to him, just like Amory and Rosalind in _This Side of Paradise._

Luke took her arm and led her in the direction of a downward stairwell to the basement. "This way," he said. "It's so weird. You find things like these, interesting clues all over the place. Basements and attics are like goldmines, but my mom once found a wedding-engagement-type ring in the cabinet under the sink. It's like these old fashioned people leave things behind intentionally, like they're setting up a big puzzle for the people of the future to solve."

"Or under the floorboards. Tried that yet?"

"I don't think my parents would approve of that. The floor is too precious to them."

"I guess," Wendy said. "The floor was rotten, I think, where we found our floorboard treasures. My little sister's leg fell through, you see."

The Hayes basement, although dim and stuffy and overall a bit eerie, was considerably more cheerful than the Aickman basement. It had cracked cement walls and a cement floor, and it was small, lit by a single bare light bulb. But at least there were no bizarrely stained tile or locked doors or dark, gaping panes of glass.

"Watch your step," Luke said.

They stepped around storage containers—some belonging to the Belmonte family, which Luke had messily pushed aside to make way for the good stuff, the Hayes stuff—to a cute little jewelry box hanging open near a musty, emptied-out cardboard box. "Here it is," Luke said, picking up the golden locket and setting it gingerly into her hand.

----

_Virginia sat numbly on the front steps of her house. The street was shrouded by thick, black nightfall, but the porch light laminated her face. The pendant around her neck felt hot, prickly and uncomfortable against her chest. It wasn't the same. It just didn't feel the same. This boy would never be as good. Never. The necklace wasn't even real gold. Just metal__—__meaningless, wretched metal._

_She choked on a rush of sobs breaking from her throat. Tears slid down off her chin. She covered her face with her hands and shook her head. "No__—__no!" she cried as she unhooked her necklace, clenching it in her fist before violently throwing it to the ground. "It isn't the same! I don't want him, I want my real boy back…Please come back to me, love__—__oh, please…"_

----

"Wendy? Wendy? Earth to Miss Asher?" Luke waved a hand in front of her face.

"S-sorry, Luke," she said. "I was just thinking that this does actually look pretty romantic."

"Yeah. See? I told you."

Wendy sighed and rubbed her forehead between her eyes, suddenly fatigued. "I honestly have no idea what's going on here. I guess we'll have to hit the library again after school on Monday."

* * *

**_A/N: Awful, sudden ending, I know. I had to cut if off there or else we'd have a 5000-word chapter that would take forever to write. _**

**_*Sigmund Freud: A psychologist in the late 1800s - early 1900s whose contraversial theories on psychosis, human body functions, and especially sex gained popularity in the 20s. Jonah's making reference to the Anal/Phallic Stages in Freud's famous essay on the stages of life and sexual development. More on that to come._**


	9. All Hallows' Eve, Part 1

_**A/N: Yes, I know it's been well over a month since the last update, but trust me when I say I've been busy: newspaper, homework, concerts, auditions, AND I'm please to announce that I now have a boyfriend to see on a regular basis. That, and overall lack of inspiration.**_

_**This chapter is incredibly short because I felt like I should update, and I only had half of the chapter done, and I got stuck so I figured I'd split the chapter into two updates. Part 2 should be posted soon.**_

* * *

Reverend Popescu leaned exhaustedly on his cane as he approached the tall, sunny building that sharply contrasted the natural dreariness that surrounded Goatswood, Connecticut on Halloween evening.

_Assisted Living Center of Goatswood, _the sign read. The paint was chipping away on the words_ Living _and _Goatswood―_in a very unfashionable way that seemed to get worse and worse every time the Reverend visited there.

He removed his hat and stepped in to the bitter, sterile smell of medical institution. The lady at the front desk recognized him immediately and greeted him. "He's in his room, Mr. Pop," she said, smiling. "He's rather talkative today, actually."

"Is he really? I hope that's a good thing," Nicholas murmured to himself as he entered his father's stuffy room. The salmon-colored walls were littered with antique knick-knacks and sepia toned photograph from Melvin Popescu's youth. Various friends, cars, portraits of family, and pictures of young girls especially, probably those with whom he'd had his famous "escapades" back in the day.

The elderly Melvin sat calmly swaying in his rocking chair, studying a framed photograph clutched in his hand. A plaid throw blanket was draped over his lap, and his walker stood awaiting its next use a few feet away.

"Hello, Dad," Nicholas said. He lowered himself into a folding chair near Melvin.

It took Melvin a while to respond; he seemed to enveloped in the photo he gazed at. "Son," he croaked suddenly, "did I ever tell you about this girl right here when you were a young kid?" He handed Nicholas the photo and pointed with his shaky pale finger at the old-fashioned face of a grinning teenage girl.

"No," he replied. "I don't think you did."

"Good. I don't want to have given you night-terrors." He cleared his throat and settled back into his chair.

This piqued Nicholas's curiosity. "And why is that? I'm no longer a child, that's for certain. What is it about this girl that is so horrifying?" He took the photo from his father's hand and eyed it more closely. The girl had big, dramatic dark eyes, a curly brunette French bob, and an innocent smile. Her dress hemline cut off just in time to expose the bottom half of her bony, slender knees.

"See that pretty thing?" Melvin took back the photo and shook his head as if in pity. "Picture this beauty lying on a cold, dusty floor, in a puddle of her own vomit, her blank, lifeless face covered in dry tears…and the smashed bottle of embalming fluid only a few feet away from her mouth."

Nicholas blinked. _Embalming fluid? _"That―that sure is horrible, Dad," he managed. And the only place around Goatswood that would have embalming fluid at the ready was the Aickman Mortuary…

"Who did this?" he asked. "Who poisoned this girl?"

Melvin glared at his son. "Would it really surprise you? I think not."

"The only way to find out for sure is to tell me."

"Why, of course, it was Jonathan!"

_----_

Peter and Matt heaved the mattress one yard further and lowered it onto the bed frame. They wiped the trails of sweat off their foreheads and they took a long moment to catch their breath.

Jonah wrung his hands and kept his gaze on the discolored tile floor. He felt awful that they were doing all the hard work, yet they insisted that he not help them. They said he was too weak, too fragile. But he was a live; not made of porcelain dust. He could've set up his own bed in the basement well enough, or at least he could have offered his aid to his new foster dad and brother.

_Matt. _His _foster brother. _He never could have predicted it…so surreal…

"There you go, sport," Peter said and clapped Jonah on his shoulder. "Go on. Give her a try."

For a split second Jonah almost smiled at Peter's referring to his new mattress as a female. But that was rather awkward, not funny, and he was still trying to trick himself into believing things would go just fine as he slept in the basement he'd been cruelly trapped in for so long.

"If you insist, Mr. Gatsby*," he said, and plopped himself down on the bed. But he moved too swiftly and his neck, shoulders, and back gave a heavy throb as he landed. He tried to hide his little flinch from Peter and Matt.

"What do you think?" Peter asked, grinning in anticipation.

"It's unabashedly amazing," Jonah answered dryly. He didn't care if it was lumpy or hard or anything. It was a mattress to lay his body on and soon he'd have blankets and a pillow…more than he ever could have been blessed with, hadn't Mr. Aickman came to rescue him off that cold, filthy stone floor…

----

_Jonah stepped in through the doors and removed his snowflake-dusted coat and hat. He wiped at the last remnants of his chilled tears from his face with his gloves before removing them, too._

_"Chin up, my son," said Aickman with a warm smile as he ruffled his new apprentice's hair. "You'll be safe here. You will earn income…something to start with when you're on your own with a newlywed wife and expectant child…it's for the best, you'll see."_

_"Where should I set these?" Jonah asked, his voice still strained. He gestured to the three or so satchels of his belongings he'd set on the floor to remove his outerwear. _

_"In your new room, of course. Follow me, son." Aickman led him up the grand wooden staircase and around the corner, past a few empty rooms until finally they stopped in front of a door, the only one that was closed instead of casually hanging open as if waiting for an occupant._

_The room already had a bed and vanity set up. It looked rather childish, if not a little feminine. The headboard on the bed had a picture depicting a scene of a medieval kingdom, like in the fairytales. The walls were painted light, greenish-blue, and had a peculiar mural of birds in a tree on the wall against which the shabby white dresser was pushed._

_He recalled a poem in a Fitzgerald novel:_

"_The shadow of a dove  
__Falls upon the cote, the trees are filled with wings;  
__And down the valley through the crying trees,  
__The body of the darker storm flies; brings  
__With its new air the breath of the sunken seas  
__And slender tenuous thunder…"_

"_Was this once a baby's room?" Jonah wondered aloud._

_"No, it was not," Aickman said. He cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "I never had any children; I've told you that previously. And this house wasn't built too long ago. The child would only be about your age our younger…but you of all boys would be aware of when this house was built."_

_Jonah nodded solemnly. "Of course I know," he said, his mind flashing to his family, his own wonderful home. _

_"When this house was built, I told the painters I wanted a mural in one of the rooms," Aickman explained. "Something light and whimsical. To brighten the concept of a mortuary being just a few stairs below, to create a relaxing environment for a future apprentice."_

_Again Jonah nodded._

_"I now shall leave you to your unpacking," said Aickman. "I have a cadaver to finish up downstairs. Tomorrow we will begin your training."He turned and with strict, upright posture left Jonah all alone in his new bedroom._

* * *

_**A/N: That poem is just too awesome. It fits so well. The dove ("Jonah" means dove), the trees filled with wings, and the VALLEY full of crying trees..and the fact that it comes from "This Side of Paradise" makes it that much more fitting.**_

**_* "Sport" "Mr. Gatsby." - In F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous novel "The Great Gatsby" the character of Mr. Gatsby always calls the main character Nick Carraway "old sport."_**


	10. All Hallows' Eve, Part 2

**AN: Wow. Longest, sincerest apologies to all my loyal readers. I know it's been 3 months since the last (real) chapter was uploaded. Gosh, I feel so bad about that. My excuses this time: I dealt with harsh issues at school, went through a breakup, and for the first month of summer vacation I've taken drivers' ed, etcetera. So enough defending myself. Thanks to those who reviewed during my hiatus, as they kept reminding me that I needed to get my bum in gear. ;)**

**Enjoy the chapter.**

* * *

"Hold still," Wendy said as she secured the candy-pink fairy wings between her sister's shoulders. She fastened the last lace and pulled it tight. She plunked a pink feathery bejeweled crown onto Mary's head for a finishing touch, and led her in front of the full-length mirror on Wendy's closet door. "Open your eyes now," she said, hoping Mary would approve of her work.

The first-grader popped her eyes open and grinned excitedly. "I'm a fairy princess!" she cried.

"And a very pretty one at that."

"Wendy, why aren't you going trick-or-treating with us?" Mary whined.

She hesitated. It took a lot of mental strength to keep her mind from wandering downstairs… "I already told you, Mary Christmas. I'm too old!" She forced a laugh and lovingly patted her sister's shoulder.

"But you went with us last year…there isn't much difference between fifteen and sixteen…and you were even fifteen _and a half_ last time!"

Wendy sighed. It's Halloween, she told herself, don't get irritated. Keep a nice long fuse. "Well, now I'm sixteen and a half, and I think it's time I put away the candy and read a scary story on Halloween instead."

Mary took a while to think of how to reply to that. Eventually she gave up and simply sighed, "Okay."

"Okay. Good. Now let's go downstairs and get your pumpkin, and you'll be all ready to go."

###

Matt glared anxiously at the VHS tapes set on the coffee table. He couldn't wait for the kids and his parents to begin their trick-or-treating voyage so he, Wendy, and Carrie could watch the gory horror movies in the dark.

_Wait_, he thought.

What about Jonah?

As far as Matt knew, Jonah was downstairs curled up on his new bed, sleeping like usual. Which Matt couldn't protest to―that kid needed tons of rest.

Earlier that day, his dad had explained to him the shocking extent of Jonah's physical condition when they brought him back. "The way he was, Matt," Peter had said solemnly, "he just might have died eventually anyway. He was so dehydrated, and exhausted, so overworked. And skinny."

Matt had said nothing, just eyed the floor with sadness and concern wrestling in his stomach.

Peter continued, "Either he would have collapsed under the exhaustion, or become so weak that he caught a serious illness and succumbed to that, or…there are a lot of possibilities. I'm just glad we were able to bring him back, and give him a second chance, after all he went through."

He swallowed and nodded. He couldn't stop the thought, _Why didn't we just let him pass on and have rest? _from entering his head.

Now, Wendy escorted the fairy princess Mary down the stairs. Matt grinned and complimented his younger cousin on her costume. Mr. and Mrs. Campbell were on the scene to take what seemed like hundreds of pictures of her and the pirate Billy. On the small table near the front door, Sara had placed a hefty bowl of candy and treats for the trick-or-treaters that would come to their own door. Wendy and Matt had been instructed to hand out the treats accordingly, as the married couple would be out accompanying their own young trick-or-treaters.

Matt sighed. He'd have to pause the movies at least a hundred times while watching them to get the door and distribute sweets to already-hyperactive children.

Wendy sat down on the couch next to him. Leaning close to his ear, she murmured, "Where's Jonah?"

"Downstairs. Asleep. I think."

"You _think_?"

"He looked pretty wiped out when I came up here. So I can assume…Why do you ask?" He squinted his eyes at her.

"I―I was just wondering," she said. She cleared her throat and pretended to straighten out her sweater. "I've only seen him, like, once or twice. It hardly feels like he's even here. I'm just―sort of waiting for the reality to hit me, you know?"

"I know what you mean," Matt said.

###

Jonah twitched in his sleep and turned onto his left side. Once, he had overheard his mother's nurse tell her to do so in order to ease a bellyache. He also wondered if the aches that knotted throughout his entire body would _ever _fade away, or if he was stuck like this forever due to some malfunction in the reincarnation ritual.

He squeezed his closed eyes more tightly shut, then tried to pry them open, but his mind screamed _Sleep! Sleep! Sleep! _in protest. But he wanted to awaken and roam the basement, if only for a few moments, perhaps to make sure his joints didn't rust and lock up forever or something.

_On the count of three, _he dictated his body, feeling determined now, _I'm going to wake up and get out of this bed. One…Two…Three. _He placed his hands over his eyes and pulled them open with his fingers, and gazed through his fuzzy vision. After eyeing the mortuary door for a while, he summoned enough energy to, with one quick painful motion, pull himself upright. Gingerly he lowered his sock-covered feet to the chilly floor. He limped with the stealth of an old man towards the mortuary, rubbing the catch in his lower back, surprised at how stiff he'd gotten.

The only thing that kept Jonah from cowering back into bed was the curious realization that, had he never died in the first place, he would be walking similar to this anyway. He would be seventy-six years old. With this intriguing thought to distract his mind from his pain, he made the remainder of the way to those gaping black windows.

Jonah turned the knob and wandered inside.

It felt different in there, while alive. As a spirit, retreating back to the embalming room felt like returning to his home, which it had been. Now, he sensed that he was unwelcome in these quarters, and something willed him out. The atmosphere flooded his head with horrible memories and negative emotions.

Suddenly feeling faint, he steadied himself against the gurney at the center of the room. He lightly fingered its smooth metallic surface. "Aickman…" he breathed. The word slipped from his mouth before he could stop it. He couldn't prevent himself from flashing back to all those times they'd stood before that very table and cut up helpless bodies.

"Jonah?" a voice interrupted his string of memories.

Shocked, he turned sharply around to gaze at the offender. "Uh―Wendy," he choked. How much of his poignant reflection in the embalming room had she witnessed? Did she see the obviously glum and guilty face he'd had on? He tried to force a smile without breaking his own face. "I―I was walking around. I had become stiff just laying there all the time. I-in my joints, I mean…"

"That's okay," she said gently. For a moment she seemed to eye his standing profile. "I just came down to check on you. Everyone's gone in the house except Matt and me―and Matt's girlfriend…"

Jonah raised his eyebrows in intrigue, feigning pleasantness. "Oh? And where have the parents and children gone to?"

"Trick-or-treating," Wendy said with a grim look shadowing her face.

He swallowed. "It's Halloween?" Oh, how he loathed All Hallows' Eve―the day that, supposedly, spirits were to roam freely about the world seeking revenge. But really they knew nothing. Ghosts roamed as much on any other day as they did on the 31st of October―maybe even less, as children were parading around with sheets upon their heads trying to act like spirits. The specters found that humiliating and irritating, and tended to hide and keep quiet on the day that everybody would be looking for them.

Even the ex-ghost Jonah was mortified to find that indeed it was The Day of the Dead―they brought his living soul home from the hospital on _The Day of the Dead. _

"Oh. How nice," he giggled nervously.

Wendy glanced down at her feet. "Don't worry, Jonah. I was thinking it, too." After a pause, she sighed, "Well, I guess I'll go back upstairs now, if you don't need anything…We're going to watch some movies."

She began to walk towards the stairs. Jonah, however, sheepishly followed. This had piqued his interest: he hadn't seen a film in decades. He knew they were audible, in color, and accessible through the convenient little electronic box they kept in the living room (they needn't go to a picture palace), but he desired to see how else they'd changed, in actors, music, and subject matter. "Uh―Wendy?" he stammered.

She turned, wearing a soothing smile. "Yes?"

"May I watch them with you? I want to find out more of modern films."

Wendy hesitated for a moment, seemingly in disbelief, then her smile warmly spread. "That would be great for you, Jonah…Only, you have to meet Matt's girlfriend Carrie. Don't worry, she's nice. We've told her all about you." Jonah's eyes widened, appearing suspicious. "Oh. You're _Sara and Peter's new foster kid. Matt's new foster brother and roommate._ She doesn't know about…" She trailed off, and the two exchanged understanding nods.

"I'm fine with that," Jonah said. "He's told me a lot about her as well."

He was a little nervous to climb the steps with her, for fear that his bones would resume their pitiful aching, but found that he no longer hurt. His soreness had faded, and he couldn't tell if the cause was Wendy's kindness or truly, finally being rested and healed.


	11. Sweet Dreams

**AN: I think by now you guys should be used to me taking one month+ to update. You'll just have to be patient! :) This time, I almost lost my muse completely for this entire fandom, and fanfiction in general, with this chapter only half finished. But then I got a hold of the original HiC script (thanks A BUNCH to Opal Static) and I just had to keep writing. (Did you know Jonah was supposed to have GREEN eyes in the script? Interesting!) Anyway, I recieved a critique saying that things were moving a bit too slowly in this story so expect things to get moving pretty quickly here. Enjoy!**

* * *

Matt clenched a couch pillow in one hand and gripped Carrie's hand with his other. The TV screen flickered and filled the dark room with random flashes of white and red. In the movie, the man's throat poured scarlet blood and he screamed in pure agony before going completely silent and still. His masked attacker stood over his curled-up form and cackled.

Needing an excuse to turn his gaze away from the disturbing movie, Matt glanced to his right at Jonah, squeezed between him and Wendy. Jonah stared at the television set, also wide-eyed, but not with horror. His expression was more of wonder, of relaxed curiosity.

Before he'd slipped the VHS tape in, he'd warned Jonah that the movies would get rather creepy and graphic. Jonah had shot him an irate look, that reminded Matt that not much could scare Jonah. Not after all he'd been through and experienced, not after working with the dead and contacting the very same dead.

He also was more or less concerned by Jonah's reaction to Carrie. The two hadn't exchanged many words, but Jonah had stared at her with the wide eyes of terror that Matt had expected to be saved for the movies. Thinking about it, though, Carrie's ash-blonde hair and tight stovepipe pants and low-cut sweater could've been alarming to a boy from an era of loose-fitting dresses.

Suddenly, a strange noise bled into the air that Matt didn't recognize. Assuming right away that it was the movie, he flinched and jumped accordingly. But nothing seemed to be too awry on the screen―just the murderer stalking his next victim―and the sound had come more from his right than in front of him on the television. He turned his head to find Jonah's face scrunched in an almost comical look of shock and discomfort. Then Matt noticed the lock of dark hair that dangled over Jonah's arm, which led his gaze to Wendy's sleeping head resting haphazardly on Jonah's shoulder. she breathed softly, but gave an occasional hiccup-like snore, as if she was reacting to something in her dream.

Matt grinned and playfully nudged him. "She seriously fall asleep?" Jonah nodded, his awkward expression not wavering. "Well, wake her up, then!"

"I fear it would be impolite…" he muttered. "And she looks so…I don't know…innocent. Why don't we let her be―I'll get used to it."

Matt shrugged, a little confused. "Suit yourself, then," he said, and wrapped his arm around Carrie.

###

_Spring 1922_

"_I need you to watch my routine," she begged him. Her delicate young girls' fingers gripped his lanky young boys' wrist and led him to stand in the middle of the stone driveway that led to his marvelous house. "And I need you to stand back a bit―like this, right here―so you can watch everything."_

_"But must I?" he whined. "I know nothing about ballet. You could prance around like a chimpanzee and I wouldn't know the difference."_

_"Oh, but please!" She clasped her hands together. "I think you will know the difference. I have a recital tomorrow, and I want to show you." Her voice wavered as she said, "I want to show you because you're my best friend. Even if you are a boy. Please, Jonah?"_

_His irritated expression melted, and his warm, friendly manners took over. "All right. For you, Ginnie."_

_She squealed in delight, knowing her about-to-cry treatment always worked with him. She ran up the steps in front of his house, using the white-painted wooden porch as a stage. Humming the melody to her song in her head, she counted off the beats and began her routine of leaps and spins._

_When she had finished, she turned to face her one man audience, but heard two sets of hands applauding her. There, next to Jonah, stood Melvin Popescu, the local reverend's son, and the neighborhood bully that liked to hit Jonah and pull all the girls' hair. All the girls' hair, except Virginia's. Jonah did not looked pleased to have Melvin show up at random, especially while he was spending time with his friend. At least he never picks on Jonah while I'm around, she thought, and took a bow despite her confusion._

_She leaped off the porch, disregarding the last three steps. "What brings you here, Melvin?" she spat, hands on her hips._

_"Oh, nothin' special, Ginnie. I just was passing by and saw you spinning around all pretty on that porch. I stopped by to watch you." He gave Jonah a hard nudge from the side, not causing any immediate damage but promising more once Ginnie walked away to go home. _

_Strangely, Jonah didn't react. He seemed to have spaced out, staring with wide icy eyes off into nowhere. His hands twitched and he looked positively horrified. A line of thick, scarlet blood began to dribble from between his lips. Virginia gasped in alarm. _

"_Melvin!" she yelled. "Did you hit him?"She took a satiny white kerchief from her dress pocket and dabbed at the mute Jonah's chin._

"_No I didn't! I swear I didn't!" cried Melvin._

_Desperate, Virginia pulled down Jonah's lower lip and searched for a source of blood on the inside of his lips and teeth. They were as close as siblings, and she was alarmed and worried, so touching his mouth hardly felt awkward to her. He remained completely unresponsive, staring off and breathing heavily._

"_There's no cuts or anything," she murmured. "Just…blood. You didn't see him cough, did you?" she asked Melvin, and he shook his head, debunking the possibility of tuberculosis._

_Just then, Jonah seemed to snap out of his eerie trance. He blinked, and spit a few drops of bright red onto the ground. "What just―" he stammered. "I saw―I don't know. I thought I saw…"_

_Melvin's jaw dropped, and he began to jog away, saying something about "What a freak!" as he ran. Virginia gently led Jonah by his trembling shoulder into the Herrells' large, stately home and tended to the blood stains on the front of his shirt, reveling in horror from this bizarre incident._

Wendy lifted her eyelids open. She knew all too well who had just visited her in her dreams, and for the first time the spirit girl had openly revealed her name…as well as Jonah's. All of this made her want to ditch this Halloween business and pedal as fast as she could on her bike to Luke's house or the library.

She then noticed her left cheek was much warmer than the other. She was laying her head on something warm, and hard―bony, it seemed. And she could feel breath―warm, unscented breath.

Puzzled, she lifted her head, and met the eyes of the bloody-mouthed boy in her dream.

"I do hope you had a nice nap…" Jonah began, but Matt cut him off.

"Dude! Wendy! How on _earth _could you have fallen asleep during that movie! That was the freaking scariest movie ever! Seriously, you should have seen the way he sliced off her hand―just took a butcher knife and _chopped it right off!"_

"I guess I missed out," she murmured, nervously scooting herself away from Jonah.

###

Two movies and dozens of trick-or-treaters later, Carrie lifted her bright pink windbreaker off the coat hanger and grabbed her purse. "Bye-bye, everyone," she chirped. "Oh! And it was very nice meeting you, Jonah." The two awkwardly shook hands as Jonah gawked at her neon-blonde teased bangs, thinking _How could that look possibly be found attractive these days?_. "Hope you feel even better soon."

He cleared his throat, unable to suppress an uncomfortable blush. "Thank-you. It was, um, a pleasure meeting you, too."

She wandered out the door, and Matt followed her to drive her home. Which left Jonah and Wendy completely alone in the large, settling house. They shared a minute of uneasy eye contact. Finally Jonah summoned enough courage to ask the question that had been weighing on his tongue for some time since she'd awakened. "Wendy, while you were asleep…on my shoulder…Um, you appeared to be dreaming. May I ask what the dream was about?"

Wendy hesitated and stuttered over her words for a long time. "It was nothing, Jonah. I really don't remember a lot of it. Something dumb, I'm sure."

"I'm sorry, but I think you may be lying." He tried to look as serious as he could while remaining polite to the lady.

"No!" she said, appalled. "I―it wasn't anything. I'm serious. Well, no," she sighed as if admitting defeat. "I guess I did dream something significant…I dreamt about my family. My mom and dad and Mary. Yeah, that's what I dreamt about."

Although she still seemed to be holding up an uncomfortable shield, Jonah decided to back down. He dared not accuse her of lying again, once she had mentioned her family, which he feared were a sensitive, forbidden subject, for it bore the reason why she and Mary stayed with the Campbells. And he couldn't picture it as being a pleasant reason at all.

"Oh. I see." He forced a smile and nodded.

"Listen, Jonah, I'm real sorry I ended up sleeping on you…I don't even remember feeling tired. I guess I just…conked out. I'm sorry." As if without thinking, she reached up and gave his cheek three loving pats.

Jonah's face and ears caught fire. He remembered his mother blaming his quickness to blush on his pale complexion, and his father had said it was because he was just plain timid. Wendy retracted her hand and looked equally shocked at what she had just done, as if she hadn't meant to at all. As if something else, besides her own conscience, had willed her to touch him in such an endearing manner.

He glimpsed into her eyes then, and noticed how the certain way her doe-like eyes sparkled, sharply reminded him of one particular person from his past. They were so remarkably similar…he had to struggle to control his emotions from the memories those eyes struck. "Wendy…" he said, disregarding her earlier apology, "It's very late. I think I will head off to bed now. Good night."

"Me too. Good night."

###

Jonah flopped impatiently onto his other side in bed, sandwiching his head between his blanket and pillow to block out the noise. The place was not 100% clean of spirits. It never would be. What remained now were dozens of residual hauntings, unconscious movie scenes doomed to repeat themselves over and over again. While unintelligent beings incapable of thinking for themselves or contacting the living, the residual entities were vivid and they echoed continuously in Jonah's supernaturally sensitive ears.

"_Don't you dare look at me like that, boy! This is part of your training, this is for your own good!" (A loud crash.) "Now fetch me the scalpel. We have work to do."_

_(A loud, harsh laugh. Unmistakably Aickman. He was obviously alone.) "What a remarkable talent. Surely I'll be rich! Oh, my dear Joseph, if only you were around to see this!...But then, you will! We shall bring you forth and speak to you soon…" (The noise is muffled, but it sounds like hysterical laughter mixed with tears.)_

_(One crashing noise after another punctuates the speech.): "But, sir! They want out…They do not wish to be trapped here!" (The voice yelps in pain.) "Please, Aickman, please! Their rage is ever growing―"_

Among the many, many smaller noises and whispers, those three scenes were the loudest. The first pained Jonah, for it was his own horrible memory. The second puzzled him. Who was Joseph, and why did Aickman weep for him? The third was most painful, for it reminded Jonah of what he was unable to do alone and before he was burned, despite how hard he'd tried.

His perceptions of the residual hauntings destroyed his faint hope that he would lose his gifts upon the reincarnation. Lying in the hospital, he'd once fantasized about shedding his powers and living a normal person's life (it it sincerely was true that he just _had_ to live at all). But no, his powers remained strong, perhaps even stronger, for he'd spent time on the other side of the valley and was ripped back.

So, Jonah pressed his hands to his ears (which provided little or no help, for the noises manifested in his head, not through his eardrums) and eventually, pure fatigue allowed him to fall asleep despite the voices…

Slowly, as if descending into thick quicksand, he sunk into a vague, blurry dream. The scene was dark, but seemed to glow. There were voices, or rather, _a _voice, whose screams were faint but gradually grew louder as the picture grew clearer. Then came the crackling, popping noises of a massive fire. Jonah was sure, though, that he was not re-experiencing his own death. The screams were not his (although they were from a post-pubescent male). In fact, the voice screamed in a different language entirely. The only words he understood were:

_"Papa! Papa!"_

Once the image had materialized, he saw what appeared to be a sort of living room, being eaten away by flames. A boy, no younger or older than Jonah, stood frozen in terror in the center of the room, trapped. He was dressed in clothing that appeared to be from the Edwardian era, perhaps in the years just before Jonah was born.

The boy looked up at the ceiling in desperation. Simultaneously, a loud splitting noise tore the air above. Terror filled the boy's eyes even more, and he howled a few times more for his Papa. Above him, the ceiling was beginning to split, crack, and cave in. It was only a matter of time before the burning flanks of the upper floor collapsed upon him.

Then, just as the ceiling finally gave way, Jonah's dream faded abruptly to black. Nothing but a bloodied, partially charred face remained. The left side of the head was gruesomely caved in and gushing blood. The burns and blisters were present but moderate; not nearly as bad as Jonah's had been. However, the face _did _look a lot like Jonah's own, except for two large differences: instead of cold eerie blue, the eyes were a dramatic forest green. His hair was a few shades lighter, and shorter, and the bangs were combed to the side away from his face, instead of cut straight across his forehead.

A sudden painful wrench in his stomach caused Jonah to jolt upright in bed. The face of the other boy remained in his mind.

###

Wendy kept yawning, but she knew she wasn't tired. She sat, legs folded, on her bed near the light of her nightstand lamp. She flipped between the printed newspaper articles about Virginia, reading their contents over and over.

She tried to recall every vivid detail of her latest vision. Jonah's shirt had been a dull mauve-ish color. Virginia's dress had been mid thigh-length, and had a green gingham pattern. But these details couldn't help her at all. What she reveled from most was the mention of a _Melvin Popescu. _Wendy puzzled over the many ways this kid could've been related to the Reverend.

In need of visual aid, she took out a piece of notebook paper and drew a circle and wrote _Virginia _inside of it. She drew two smaller circles above it and labeled them _Melvin_ and _Jonah _and connected them with lines. Along the line that connected Virginia and Jonah, she labeled their relationship as, _Childhood best friends, possibly teenage lovers. _Connecting Virginia and Melvin, she wrote _He has childhood crush on her, possibly teenage lovers. _She decided to connect Jonah and Melvin with, _Enemies._ Wendy stared at her chart, waiting for something to dawn upon her.

Then it did.

_MTP. Melvin T. Popescu. _The initials on the locket.

Wendy considered, hypothetically, that perhaps Jonah and Virginia were romantically involved. After all, they were practically flirting already at age eleven, and Melvin and Jonah were developing a rivalry over her. Perhaps, after Jonah went away to work for Aickman, Melvin seized the opportunity and attempted to "steal" Virginia by giving her the necklace. However, Virginia could not bring herself to love Melvin as she had Jonah, which would explain why she'd repulsed the locket while crying for her "true lover."

Yes, it tied everything together and made perfect sense. But it still provided little answers regarding Virginia's tragic death, which is what had intrigued Wendy in the first place.

Decoding a giant piece of the puzzle didn't cure Wendy's insomnia like she'd hoped. It only made her more excited, and she figured she wouldn't be able to sleep at all until she called Luke to tell him _everything_ about her discovery.


	12. A Lovely Gift

**AN: Longest chapter, (roughly 4,300 words) and shortest update time (less than a week). I'm on fire! :D**

* * *

A week had passed since Jonah joined the family. Yet, unfortunately, there had been no advances in the mystery of Virginia Hayes since the night of the nearly-forgotten shoulder incident. The morning after, Wendy had eagerly picked up the phone and begun to dial, but then she quickly realized: she possessed no documental evidence to support her epiphany. She had no proof that the mysterious MTP's initials were Melvin T. Popescu, outside of her vision. And there was no way she was telling Luke about her contact with Virginia―he would surely laugh in her face.

So, Wendy decided to keep it all to herself until she was able to find real proof of her assumptions.

Also, in the past few days, there had been numerous other awkward moments between her and Jonah. Two significant ones. The first involved the two of them nearly colliding with each other while heading down opposite directions of the hallway. The second happened when the two of them, both insomnia-plagued, travelled to the main floor of the house to stare out the living room window, or get a glass of water, or whatever else one does to prolong time in bed. They startled each other, then blushed, for Wendy wore her shortest nightgown and Jonah wore only a thin white tee-shirt and boxer shorts. Both took horrified steps backward, and scurried back to their rooms without a word.

However, the latter of the incidents had inspired a thought within Wendy. Jonah was a medium. He knew how to contact the dead. He could have visions and see spirits. Matt had been terminally ill, somewhere in the valley between life and death. Therefore, it made sense that they both had had experiences with those no longer living.

This left no explanation for why Virginia could reach Wendy spiritually. If anything, one would assume she'd be contacting her old lover, a medium that could see her without doubt. And maybe she _was_ visiting Jonah―how could Wendy know? But either way, Wendy still contemplated over why she was able to have visions in the first place. If she, for some reason, had suddenly developed psychical powers, why was Virginia the only spirit she had contact with? And she couldn't be sick…could she?

Eventually, she came to the conclusion that she would go the Reverend for answers, at the first chance she got.

###

That Saturday, Wendy felt extremely glad it was the weekend, for she had gotten no sleep last night (once again). She was able to fall asleep quickly, but that was ruined in no time by another of her dreams. This wasn't a vision from Virginia, however―the dream turned out to be that of an average teenage girl, in all the wrong ways. It involved only two people: just her and Jonah. There were sloppy kisses, heavy breath, and bare skin. She awoke with a deep gasp, horrified about it yet disappointed that it ended, and was not able to will herself back to sleep.

At this point, there was no denying that Wendy was gradually sinking into a crush on the very _last_ person she should be in love with.

She dressed and walked down to the kitchen, where Sara had already prepared breakfast.

"I cut you a break this morning," Sara said. "I know you've been having troubles sleeping lately. Any ideas why?" She gently set her hand on her niece's shoulder and guided her into the breakfast room, where they were alone, to discuss the issue.

"Racing thoughts, bizarre dreams, lots of stuff on my mind, I guess," Wendy said casually. "The subconscious is a powerful thing."

Sara nodded sympathetically. "Don't snap at me for asking, but is there…boy troubles? Is there something between you and _Mr. Belmonte_?"

"No! We're only friends and we're getting along fine. Seriously." Wendy busied herself with fixing a piece of French toast, dumping way more syrup on than necessary.

"Okay…" Sara smiled, though she appeared skeptical. "Are you sure there's not _any_ boy right now? No one special?"

"I don't want there to be."

"But is there, despite?"

Wendy grew quiet. She was cornered. She had to make up a lie, and quickly so―make up some guy to describe so Sara might leave her alone. However, as soon as she opened her mouth to begin her lie, the truth strolled into the room, more pleasant than normal for this time of day.

"Good morning," Jonah said sweetly. Then he raised his eyebrows, befuddled. "Am I the first one up, besides you two?" he asked.

Sara burst into a warm smile at the sight of him in such a good mood, while Wendy ignored the sudden escalation in her pulse, masking her giddiness with an extra grumpy scowl. Sara promptly set up a place for him at the table, leaving Wendy sitting between the two of them where she silently suffocated.

The three finished their breakfast in silence, until Wendy irritably dropped her fork onto her plate and got up to set her dishes in the sink. She had to get out of there and sort out her thoughts―fast―before her head burst like a balloon. "I'm going to ride my bike for a while. To get some fresh air outside," she declared. Sara assured her it was a good idea, and she was out the door, pedaling overtop the warm palette of fallen leaves. _Please let Reverend Popescu be in his office, _she prayed.

###

Nicholas wandered about the grounds of the abandoned church he'd made his personal office and place for study. He paced in circles around the Angel With the Black Tears statue, once again revisiting his best memories with his deceased wife. Thoughts of her kept thoughts of his father and Jonah off his mind.

He'd been to visit the Campbells a few days after the boy was brought home from the hospital. They all seemed happy, and Jonah, although rather timid, seemed to be settling in comfortably. He was always very polite, very calm―sometimes he'd drift away into this thoughts and would be nearly impossible to wake up from his trance. If he'd had anything at all to do with that girl's suicide, it certainly wasn't his fault. He could _not _be responsible at all, with that solemn, innocent demeanor.

…And here he was, thinking nonstop about that boy again. _Someday, _Nicholas thought, _when he's feeling all better, I'll have to talk to him and ask him about everything―_

Just then, he heard the skidding of bike tires coming to a stop on the gravel pathway outside the church. "Reverend Popescu!" a familiar female voice called. Wendy dismounted her red vintage bicycle and jogged over to him, shivering in her sweater against the moist autumn air. "Reverend," she called again, "I―I need to ask your advice on something. It's very important…And it's _scaring _me…" she admitted breathlessly.

Nicholas looked at her with concern. "All right, Miss Asher. What is it that's troubling you? I'm glad you came to me." He led the girl inside, into the old sanctuary, where they sat in the very last row of pews. Wendy blinked rapidly and was constantly fidgety. Nicholas guessed that she had been dealing with utmost stress.

Wendy shrugged and soberly shook her head. "Where to begin?"

"Try going back as far as you can, and tell me the _entire _story. I have plenty of time."

She took a few moments to think. "Okay…I guess it started right when we moved here. I was so eager to help Matt with researching the house because, from the first moment I walked in, I knew something was weird. I wasn't scared, but I just felt…odd. I felt it most in my bedroom. Whenever I opened the closet or looked in the mirror, I could just _sense _the heavy past in there. And when I started researching, the feeling that I wasn't alone got thicker. And it was like I could sense _his _spirit. I became fascinated with him and the house.

"Then, when our house was rebuilt, I started to forget. I _wanted_ to, and it felt like we were all moving on. But I couldn't get myself to move on completely. I still wanted to learn more and more about the house. Bits and pieces of its past that I might've missed before. And I came across _this_ article…" She reached inside her large black tote bag, and took out a piece of copied newspaper.

Nicholas took and read the article, titled _More Drama Surrounds Suspicious Mortuary―Girl Found Dead, Poisoned. _Immediately he recognized the girl, Virginia Hayes. The girl whose portrait his father had shown him. The one whose death Melvin blamed on Jonah.

"I've heard of her," he said, seeing all the many ways Wendy could be going with her story. This intrigued him more than ever.

"At the library, I met my friend Luke. He lives in Virginia's old house. He has her diary, filled with letters to no one in particular, and he's found so many pictures of her, and he even found her locket, which has the initials MTP and VLH. And this is where it gets even weirder. When I picked up the locket…I saw her. I had, like, a vision of her, sitting on her front porch and crying for her 'true love.' I'd had a few dreams of her before that. And I think―I think she's trying to contact me. But _that _is where I need your help because I don't know how or why I can see her. I'm not sick, and I'm not psychic. How come she can give me these visions?"

Nicholas took a deep breath and thought for a moment. "Well, every human is capable of catching glimpses of ghosts, regardless of their physical state or supernatural inclinations. If a spirit is strong enough, and wants your attention enough, they can break through the border, but not without a deal of energy. Now, see, Jonah was an old and injured spirit, who needed to preserve his energy for his final task, so he had to wait for someone like Matt to come around. Make sense?"

Wendy nodded, still appearing distressed. "So, I'm not dying and I haven't magically become psychic?" Nicholas answered the negative. She hesitated before quietly saying, "…There's one more thing."

"Ask away, Wendy."

"Well…Let's say you have a situation like mine, with Virginia, who is somehow connected to someone you know, like I know Jonah. And let's say you're beginning to feel things you never thought you'd feel, regarding the other person. Except you don't think it's _you_ feeling that way, but the spirit is _making_ you. Are you getting this?"

"I think so. Are you saying that Virginia might be somehow influencing you to…develop stronger feelings for Jonah?"

This seemed to trigger something within Wendy, something that broke her collected exterior, and her eyes flooded with tears. She clamped her hand over her trembling mouth and nodded. "I know it's wrong," she sobbed. "It's like, every time he walks into the room…my heart jumps. I catch myself wondering what it would be like if we kissed. And I'm very sure that I wouldn't be feeling this way if it weren't for Virginia."

The Revered produced a tissue from his pocket and handed it to the weeping girl. "I understand this must be a very confusing situation for you," he murmured, "but I think Virginia may have something she wants you to accomplish, similar to Matt and Jonah. Perhaps―should she really be the cause of your feelings―this is part of her plan. And if you want to help her―do you?"

Wendy sniffed and whispered, "Yes."

"Then I suggest you allow your attraction to Jonah to come full circle. Embrace it. Allow yourself to grow closer to him. Then put the pieces of the puzzle together and figure out what she needs. In the meantime…" He took Wendy's hand and wrote in blue ink on the back of her palm, _Melvin Thomas Popescu, Goatswood Assisted Living, _followed by the institution's phone number. "…My father may be able to help provide some information."

She halted her crying immediately, and mouthed a phrase that looked like, _The Locket._ "Melvin Popescu is your _father_?"

###

"So _who_ are we going to see at the assisted living?" Luke pedaled as fast as he could to keep up with the ecstatic Wendy.

She grinned widely. "MTP." She laughed at the astounded expression Luke's face, jaw dropped and all. Immediately he interrogated her on every little detail of how she obtained this information. "I went to the priest who helped us with the old house for advice," she explained. "He referred me to his dad, Melvin Thomas Popescu, saying that Melvin _knew_ Virginia when they were in high school. It wasn't that difficult to figure out." She had to exclude, of course, the part about her visions and their relation to her attraction to Jonah, who wasn't even alive, as far as Luke was concerned.

Inside, an atomic war of excitement raged on. Her heart pounded, aided with her strenuous pedaling. Her stomach churned with butterflies, and she knew some of the wings were left over from her encounter with Jonah just that morning.

At the home, a nurse directed them down an extensive hallway. It reminded Wendy of passageways in psychological-thriller horror movies, which made her heart give a particularly excruciating squeeze. The nurse peeked into the room and told Melvin that there were two kids here to ask him some questions, "for an essay on the town's history." Wendy had expected him to be reluctant, but he eagerly agreed. They entered and chose their seats.

"Hello," the chubby, bald old man sitting in a rocking chair said. "What can I help you with?"

Wendy began, "Hi. I'm Wendy, and this is Luke. We want to know about…about…" but her throat tightened and her lips locked up. She couldn't spit it out. Her anxiety was engulfing her. Thankfully, Luke took notice and said for her:

"Virginia Hayes. We want to know about her. And her relationship with Jonah…" He eyed Wendy questioningly, unsure of his last name. She caught herself just in time before she uttered, "Herrell," for she wasn't supposed to know that. Instead she shrugged.

"That Herrell kid," muttered Melvin, his face contorted in disgust. "That snobby rich boy, with all the money in the world. Never had to lift a damn pale finger." He snorted. "Let me tell you kids, he was quite a freak."

"He was _rich_?" Luke gasped.

In truth, Wendy had already suspected a financially okay upbringing. It showed in his impeccable table manners, his compulsive need for neatness, and his brief mentions of luxuries such as brand-new Cadillac cars and a large leather-bound book collection. His extensive vocabulary full of long words and willingness to read _anything _(including Sara's housekeeping magazines) told of enough money to go to school, and possibly plans for college. Not to mention the gorgeous house in her vision…

"He was a freak?" she asked, hoping to overrule Luke's question. "How so?"

Melvin guffawed. "He said he could talk to ghosts! For one, he always had these real creepy eyes. I saw right into them and knew he was odd. And he would space out, and there'd be no waking him. Strange things would happen when he was around, too―things would move on their own, crows would appear out of nowhere, things like that. I knew he was no good from the very start. They should have kept him in that asylum, and one beautiful lady might've lived."

It took a moment for the shock wave to hit her, then Wendy's heart broke. She pictured Jonah―her beautiful Jonah―chained, starved, and catching diseases in one of those horrific places.

"He was only in that loony bin for a day or two," Melvin continued, "Until that equally crazy mortician fished him out of there so he could use him as a lab rat."

Luke continued to ask most of the questions, for Wendy's mind still reeled uncontrollably from the thought of Jonah under such poor conditions. _He must've been so scared, _she thought, her eyes watery.

"And what about Virginia? How did they know each other?" Luke asked.

"They'd known each other since they were tiny. Their fathers―James Herrell and Warren Hayes―formed H&H Architects shortly after they both moved here around the same time―the Herrells came from Hartford and the Hayes from somewhere in Massachusetts. The Herrells moved into their big, fancy ol' mansion, and the company's first project was Warren's new house. Alma Herrell had their son a couple of winters later in 1910, then Martha Hayes had Virginia in March 1911. It was very odd because, though Alma's labor was much more difficult, Martha died while giving birth. So Alma became like Virginia's surrogate mother; took care of her quite often. Their kids spent a lot of time together. They were inseparable friends in elementary school, and then, when they were about fifteen…" Melvin halted and shook his head. "It still sickens me."

"They were in love?" Luke inquired, and Melvin answered yes. Luke and Wendy glared at each other, then he mouthed, _I knew it._

Wendy began quietly, her first spoken words since Melvin mentioned the asylum, "Did James and Alma ever have any more children?"

"No. And what a disappointment it must've been for them, their only child turning out to be such a lunatic. And poor Alma, especially. When there was something wrong with the children, people always like to blame it on what the mother did while pregnant. It didn't help that the kid looked a whole lot like her, too."

Luke said, "Tell us about their deaths."

"Herrell I don't know much about. Apparently he goofed up in one of his rituals, killed some people, then dropped off the face of the Earth. Virginia, however―her loneliness had been slowly killing her ever since he went away to work at the mortuary. I did everything I could: I made jokes for her, took her dancing, gave her presents, and I even kissed her a couple of times. But she could _never _get him off her mind, and it angered me so much. One night, she actually went to one of his séances. She came home around midnight, hysterical, saying that they were planning to run away and get married as soon as he turned eighteen and his apprenticeship expired. Well, that never happened."

Wendy noticed how Melvin avoided saying Jonah's name. "Go on," she urged.

"She never spoke to him again after that. About a month later, there was an article in the newspaper…Five people died in one of his rituals, burned mysteriously with no fire. And he went missing. She stayed at his parents' house that whole day, and that night she told everyone that she was going out looking for him. The next morning, I went looking for _her_. I knew right where to look. I found her dead in one of the bedrooms of that house. It looked like a suicide, it really did, but I've always suspected there was something more to it."

"It couldn't have been Jonah," Wendy said quickly. "He was dead by then."

"He was supposedly _missing_. He could've been hiding in that house…completely crazy, finally snapped all the way…ready to strike."

"No," she insisted. "For one, he never killed anyone. The séance deaths were an accident. And I know for a fact he died later that same night. The angry ghosts trapped him in the mortuary's cremation furnace and he burned alive." She paused to catch her breath. "I know this because I _live_ in that house. We found a pile of ashes and pieces of bone in the furnace. We did a whole bunch of research and figured it out―it was his remains. We helped free the angry ghosts. My cousin's cancer miraculously disappeared. We thought we freed Jonah's spirit, too, but apparently he decided to stay."

"Wendy…" Luke breathed.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice shaking. "But I have to stand up for him. I know he was innocent. He was a good person who had a lot of bad things happen to him. He couldn't intentionally harm anyone. Especially a girl he loved." Abruptly she stood and walked out of the room, to escape the walls closing in on her.

###

Wendy and Luke leaned against the railing on the front steps of the assisted living. "I can't believe I lost my cool so easily back there," she moaned.

"Hey, it's all right." Luke awkwardly patted her back. "After you left, I explained that it's been a long and emotional day for you, thanked him for his time, and here we are. And we got a_ lot _of useful information. Who would've guessed that he was wealthy? And that they actually planned to get married? And we know the parents' names, and we know for sure who MTP is. I think we did well."

She sighed, "I guess."

Luke shuffled uncomfortably. He began digging around in his school bag. "Speaking of the locket…" He pulled the necklace out of a side-pocket, and it glinted in the late afternoon sun. "I want you to keep it. Think of it as―um―my friendship token to you, or something. Or whatever you want to think of it as. Take it."

She had to consider this for a moment. She could accept it; this situation felt oddly too romantic. But then she thought of how it might thicken her connection to Virginia, something she couldn't abandon."Okay…" she murmured. Instantly she felt warm, dry hands across the back of her neck as he fastened the necklace _for _her. Her face grew hot. "Uh, thanks…"

###

Everything in the house was virtually silent; it had been for almost an hour. Jonah grew increasingly bored, with nothing left to read. He'd been through _Reader's Digest, Time, _and the day's _Goatswood Gazette_, having read nearly every article in each. While he figured the current events would be helpful for him to read about, to catch up with a modern world he could barely wrap his mind around, he still craved a proper novel. A Dickens, a Hemingway, or best yet, a Fitzgerald, or even a Nietzsche. Yet, with no other choice, he picked up Sara's parenting magazine and began an article about the best family vacation spots.

A few minutes passed. Then, just as the world outside became orange with sunset, Wendy came gracefully strolling in and hung her jacket up. Jonah couldn't place a reason on why he felt somewhat happy to see her. Perhaps because her return was the most interesting thing that had happened to him all day.

She spotted him on the living room sofa and grinned. "Whatcha reading?" she asked gently. She approached him with a bit of shyness.

"I'm learning how to brighten up any small living space," he declared.

She laughed―a bit more than she should have. It was then that he noticed the heart-shaped glint of yellow metal around her neck. He recognized it so well that his heart stopped cold when he realized _where _he'd seen it before. Without thinking, he reached forward and claimed the pendant in his hand while the chain was still fastened around Wendy's neck. She winced back, startled. He could feel her breath on his hand and could sense her thick, escalated pulse.

"Where did you find this?" he asked.

Her voice trembled. "My friend gave it to me."

"And where did your friend find it?"

"It―it was an heirloom in his family." Jonah saw the guilt in her face and accused her of lying, not caring about politeness. "Okay. He found it in his house. It's a very old house, and there's neat stuff everywhere." He ignored her this time as he turned the pendant over in his fingers and examined the back_. MTP and VLH. _He knew it.

Angrily he released the pendant and glared at Wendy. She looked as though she had a _lot_ to hide. Like she knew things that she never should have learned. She appeared guilty and frightened to be discovered. "How much do you know?" he demanded.

As her eyes filled with tears, she stood and began backing away from him. "What? I don't know what you're―"

_"How much do you know?" _he hissed, praying that no one else in the house could hear.


	13. The Breaking Point

**AN: Yeah, slow update, I know...Excuses: School started. Romantic issues. Focusing on novel-writing.**

**This chapter is short-ish, at least compared to the last one. I had intended it to go a bit further and be longer, but it had passed a month since my last update, and I got stuck again, so I just figured, "What the heck. I'll give them this for now. At least I'll be updating..."**

**So enjoy!**

* * *

"_How much do you know?"_

Wendy's heart squeezed painfully at the harshness in Jonah's words. His eyes were wide and blazing with an anger that threatened to melt the icy coolness of his irises.

She had figured, on her bike ride home, that she would eventually have to tell Jonah about her connection to Virginia. She just didn't expect to be found out so soon.

She blinked away her tears and cleared her throat. After opening her mouth and struggling to find her voice box, she finally choked out, "Jonah…Let's go into my room. It's more private. People might hear us," she whispered. They treaded slowly to her bedroom, which Wendy desperately used as extra time to prepare her approach, to think of a way to calm Jonah's frustration. He'd actually scared her for a moment―she had never once seen him lose his relaxed, solemn facial expression.

Once in her room, Jonah gazed at the spot on her solid lavender wall where the mural of the birds had once been. Keeping his stare on the wall, but with as much coldness as before, he commanded, "Begin. Tell me."

"To tell you the truth, Jonah, I found her _before_ you were brought back. It was the day before, actually. I was just looking…finding pieces of the house's history that I may have missed the first time around, when I was researching you. I found the article about her death." Wendy said the last sentence gently. She knew he _had_ to feel something strong about the incident; she didn't want to make him snap in a fit of anger or tears or both.

"Continue," he said sharply.

"At the library, I met my friend Luke. The one who lives in Virginia's old house. He finds a lot of interesting things. Like pictures and documents…even this necklace. He's probably more on top of his research than I am. We discovered Virginia had ties to a guy named Melvin Popescu, who by chance is the Reverend's father. And that's what I did today. I talked to the Reverend, for information and advice. Then I got Luke and we went to the nursing home and talked to Melvin about her…and you," she admitted.

It was then that Jonah brought his gaze from the wall and back to Wendy, his eyes widened not in anger but surprise. "That…that _old man _is still alive?" he asked.

She nodded. Following a pause of Wendy's eyes stinging and Jonah looking equally as miserable, she sniffed, "Jonah. I'm sorry. I don't know what exactly went down that night, the night she died, but…I'm sorry. And I shouldn't have went behind your back and looked up all that information. I should have just forgotten about it once you came to live with us. But I do know…about you two. Being―in love."

He murmured, "Wendy…"

Her tears had returned with steady force. She couldn't control it anymore. "And it just makes me _sad_ that it had to end that way." Her voice shook pathetically on the word _sad_.

Jonah blinked tightly and swallowed. With a wet sniffle, he rubbed his fingers under his eyes, trying to forge it as simply itching them with fatigue. He sat on the edge of Wendy's bed with a heavy sigh. "Come here, Wends," he whispered as he patted the blanket next to him.

She reluctantly lowered herself down, inching as far away as she could. She didn't know exactly why she was getting so emotional. Perhaps she felt so ashamed that the boy she had just discovered her feelings for probably hated her now. She'd wronged him, and she'd been aware of it the whole time.

"Wendy," Jonah pleaded as if _he _were the weak one now, "please calm down. Please stop crying. I'm so very sorry―I should not have gotten so angry with you. There's no excuse for my behavior. Forgive me." He gritted his teeth and looked away. "You don't know―It has always pained me to see women cry. Any female. Especially the pretty ones."

Immediately Wendy's heaving sobs reduced to small hiccups. "Pretty? Me?" she gasped.

"_Yes, _pretty, you." Though his head was turned away and shadowed by his bangs, she could see his ears turn bright red. "I don't mean it in any special way, but yes, you are quite pretty for a modern girl. At least you don't make your hair all poufy like some of them do." For a split second, Wendy almost smiled. He turned his head back to her and continued, "Although I do resent that you know what you know, I can't make you _un_-know it―and at least I've been spared the burden of one day telling you myself."

"That's true," she said. Jonah looked as though he wished to say something more, but couldn't find words. They sat in uneasy silence for a few minutes until he wordlessly slinked back downstairs.

###

Jonah descended the dark cherry stairs into the basement, finding it difficult to breathe. He couldn't stop thinking about her, picturing her petite round face, saying her name repeatedly in his head. _Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. My Ginnie. My lovely Ginnie, Virgie, Virginia. _From her death up until that moment (including his years as a spirit), he'd done a remarkably good job repressing his emotions about her. He kept his memories of her locked safe and away in a figurative box labeled, _Don't Touch Or You'll Explode._ He distracted himself with other things―it wasn't like he never had enough to deal with to keep his mind busy.

But now, now that _his Wendy _knew about her as well, he couldn't stop himself. He touched the box of memories in his head that threatened to make him explode. His grief began to weigh on him so greatly his body ached physically with the emotional pain, especially in his heart and lungs. He knew that inside of him was a gigantic, loud, dramatic sob that wanted out, but he refused to unleash it.

It didn't help that Matt was also downstairs, curled up on his bed reading a magazine with almost a secretive posture.

"Hey, Jonah," Matt said cheerfully. He seemed to fold himself protectively around his magazine even more. He had it pressed against his lap so Jonah couldn't see the cover, and he surrounded the pages with his arms in such a way that blocked it from Jonah's view.

Jonah couldn't bring himself to speak, even to return Matt's greeting. Instead he flopped himself on his own mattress, and turned onto his right side away from his roommate, as casually as he could.

"…You okay?" Matt inquired.

"Just tired," he managed with a nod. Matt didn't respond, but simply backed away and returned to his magazine. Miraculously, Jonah's curiosity began to overpower his sorrow for the moment. "What is that you're reading?" he asked, sitting up to gaze at him.

Matt gave a light chuckle. "Do you like girls? In _that _way?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" He narrowed his eyes. "But―yes, I do like girls. Who doesn't, by this age, really."

Matt considered his words for a moment, then said, "Well, you should know that sex―thinking about it, talking about it, or actually doing it―isn't as taboo as it was in your time, Jonah."

"I've gathered. But you still haven't answered my―"

"Ever seen a girl naked?" Matt watched intently for Jonah's reaction.

His eyes widened and he gasped, appalled. "No! Of course I haven't," he stuttered. "Well, not in person. But once, I saw a French postcard, which had a photograph of a lady with one of her…breasts exposed. Aickman often covered the female bodies' privates up while we worked on them."

Matt laughed again, partly at Jonah's facial expression and partly at his pause before saying the word _breasts. _"God, you're so innocent, Jonah. I mean, you've seen some pretty messed-up stuff, but sexually you're so clean, so pure. Well, you have seen a boob before, so I guess this wouldn't shock you _too_ much…" He flipped a few pages, turned the magazine around, and held it in front of Jonah's eyes for him to behold.

Jonah winced back and covered his scarlet face. A quick glimpse at a tanned, skinny female squishing her enormous bare breasts together with her hands was enough for him. Matt tipped his head back and burst out laughing. "Dude, it's okay, Jonah. Geez, it must've been horrible to grow up back then―having to repress your sexuality like that. I mean, how far have you ever gone with a girl? I remember asking you―before you were reincarnated―-if you ever had a girlfriend, and you got all mad at me and broke the light bulb…Why?"

"It's none of your business," he murmured.

"There _was_ a girl, wasn't there?"

He swallowed, his mood darkening again. "Yes. But―it's very painful for me to think about her. It's an awful story and it's all my f―" He stopped right there. There it was, the thought he'd been trying to ignore the most―_It's all my fault. She's dead because of me―_the dreadful truth. Suddenly the dramatic sob in his chest was up in his throat, making its way into his mouth. His eyes watered. The explosion was imminent, and he had to get away from Matt before it happened.

"I'm sorry," he mouthed. He hastily jogged up the stairs and to the very first place that crossed his mind to go. All the way he was blind―Virginia's face remained at the front of his vision, and he relied on pure instinct obtained by wandering a place for sixty years to get where he needed to be. He prayed that she was in her bedroom…

He tapped urgently on her bedroom door. "Wendy," he called in a weak voice, the first tears already spilling over. "Wendy…I need you."

She finally answered, her face a cross between confused and concerned. She had no time to speak, for in an instant she found herself enveloped tightly in Jonah's shaky arms.

With the door closed and all he had was Wendy staking him to this earth, he choked the catastrophic sob into her shoulder, followed by a series of lighter ones. At first she hung limp in his arms, then she brought them up to wrap loosely around his lower torso. "It's all right," she whispered, as if she had been expecting this encounter all day. Perhaps she knew, as well as he did, that they were alone in this knowledge about his past, and that she was the only one he could go to regarding Virginia and his emotions about her.

"I'm sorry―I can't―I didn't―" he struggled.

"It's okay, Jonah." She squeezed him tighter. "It's perfectly okay. I'm here. You can trust me."

And it was the first time, in decades, that Jonah knew he could believe a statement such as that.

###

Wendy sat in her bed, her back against the headboard. She gazed up at the ceiling but occasionally looked down at Jonah, whose head rested upon her lap, where she softly ran her fingers over his hair. She didn't know if he was aware of their somewhat romantic position, or if he just wanted something to be close to, like a puppy curling up to an article of clothing that smelled of its owner (the only comparison she could think of.)

His eyes barely hung open. Wendy considered what the Reverend had said―allow herself to get close to him and find what Virginia wants. Well, Virginia's lover was half-asleep in Wendy's lap while she lightly stroked his hair, which could probably be considered _close _enough―too quickly, it seemed. Yet she still hadn't the slightest clue what it could be Virginia wanted from her, or why. For all she knew, this scene right here could be exactly it―perhaps all Virginia wanted was for her to keep Jonah company for the time being, until he died again, and the tragic young lovers could be together for eternity. That way he had someone to hold him together so he didn't self-destruct in his heartbreak.

"Jonah…" It made her feel awful, but she had to poke him awake. "Maybe you should get up―not that I mind, but just in case someone were to walk in."

"Of course." He pushed himself upright and looked dazedly at her, his eyes still a bit red from his crying. He'd been so upset as he clung onto her for dear life and sobbed his girlfriend's name over and over. Now he just looked completely exhausted. Wendy fixed a piece of his hair that was sticking out of place and smoothed his shirt collar.

"Why don't you go back downstairs and relax?" she asked him.

"It's tranquil enough here," he insisted. "Besides, I don't know if I can face Matt just yet." She nodded sympathetically.

"You know, he probably doesn't think of you as weak, or a big baby or anything. He just has no idea what's going on inside your head. I really don't either, but at least I have some background information as to why you act the way you do. Maybe you should tell him. About everything. That way you don't have to feel like you're hiding."

He shook his head. "But I _am _hiding. It's nothing I want to tell him about just yet. Truthfully, it was nothing I wanted to tell _you _either."

She gave him a concerned look and wanted to try to convince him more, but she decided against it. "All right. When you're ready," she said.

###

Matt remained motionless, staring in astonishment at the spot where Jonah had just been. He never expected him to get so emotional about the mention of his past girlfriend―it'd never occurred to Matt that Jonah was experiencing any other emotional torment besides what he'd been through at the mortuary. But then, when Matt pursued what he thought was a light-hearted subject, Jonah bolted away, practically bursting into tears. He felt bad about it, especially since he probably came off a real pervert just before he mentioned Jonah's girlfriend. He decided to go look for him, talk to him, and apologize.

Once upstairs, he met his mother in the kitchen. "Hey, have you seen Jonah?" he asked, putting on his nonchalant, nothing-weird-just-happened face. Sara set down the dishtowel she'd been folding, thought for a moment, then answered that no, she hadn't.

"Last time I saw him, he was heading downstairs. Why do you ask?" Matt shrugged. "Well, I'm sure he's around here somewhere. I saw him chatting with Wendy earlier today. Hey," she said, getting up from her chair, "you can relay the message to Jonah and to everyone else that your father and I are going out to dinner tonight. Also, we have a surprise to tell everyone when we get back."

_Great, _Matt thought, _yet another surprise._ "Okay," he said.

Sara and Peter left, and after Matt had watched them pull out of the driveway and disappear down the road, he checked the back porch for Jonah. Nothing. Acting on what Sara had said about him talking to Wendy earlier, he decided to ask her if she knew where he went.

He tapped on the door twice before turning the knob and letting himself in. "Wends," he asked, "have you seen Jo―"

He chopped his sentence short, upon seeing the shock of blue eyes partially buried under black hair seated next to Wendy on her bed. Jonah warily lowered his gaze to his lap. "Oh―hi there. Um―yeah, I just…was going to tell everyone…that Mom and Dad are going out for dinner…and―lucky us―they have another _surprise_ to tell us when they get back." He rubbed his hands together and began backing slowly out of the doorway. Then he changed his mind. "Wendy. Can I talk to you―alone―for a moment, please?" His voice rose and cracked embarrassingly towards the end of his question.

Wendy, stifling a guilty face, nodded. Jonah shot her a warning look, as if to say, _Don't reveal any of my secrets. _Jealously flared up within Matt. Why was Jonah sharing things with Wendy, and not him? They traveled downstairs and outside, onto the front porch steps. "Do I even need to ask?" he said, throwing his hands into the air. "Explain, please."

"He came to me, Matt. What else is there to explain? He obviously doesn't want you to see his weaknesses, so he…consults me, for the emotional stuff. There's nothing wrong with that." It was getting dark and chilly. She shivered, which made her appear even more mournful and guilty.

"But―why? I mean, why does he all of a sudden prefer _you _and tell you all of his secrets when it's _me_ he's supposed to be closest to. We're like brothers, practically, after all we went through together."

She knitted her eyebrows, appalled. "You don't ownhim, Matt. Just because you were connected in death, doesn't mean he'll only like _you _and trust _you _in life. And he doesn't think of you as his brother. Of course he likes you; you make him laugh and feel 'at home' as much as he can. But you're not his brother, no more than I am his cousin. We're not his family. He already has a family."

"Yeah, but…they're all gone now," he said quietly. "Aren't they? Because I assume you'd be the one to know a whole lot about his biological family, after all." At that, she gave him a shy, doe-like look that expressed, _Yes, I do know_. "Oh, my God. Really? What else has he been telling you about and hiding from me?"

"He hasn't told me anything…I went and found out for myself."

"How?"

"How _else_? The library didn't run away after the we were done with it the first time. Jonah actually got really mad at me for looking stuff about him up."

"Well, what did you find?"

Wendy opened her mouth then clamped it shut. She set her hands on her hips, conflicted. "I―Matt, I _really, really _wish I could tell you. I've been trying to convince him to tell you himself, but he's so secretive. It's…a lot. It's not pretty."

Matt fell silent, for quite a while. Jonah had been through so much, even more than what he experienced at the mortuary. How had Matt not seen it before? In the dark, mournful shadows that plagued Jonah's face, the dim mood that kept his shoulders down, kept his mouth pressed firmly into a sad pout―the clues had all been there. "…It does makes sense that it wouldn't be nice. I mean, he looks so bummed-out all the time…"

Wendy loudly exhaled and dropped her hands from her waist, as if in defeat. "I guess, if you can promise me you'll act well and pretend like you still don't have a clue, I can tell you sometime. As I understand it, Peter and Sara are taking Jonah out this weekend to buy him some clothes of his own. With all of them out of the house, I'll explain as much as I can to you then."

With those plans being settled, the two headed back into the cozy heat of the house.

* * *

**Bad ending, I'm aware. But so much time has passed, I had to close it up there so I could at least update before too long.**


	14. Out, Out

**A/N:" Ummm...It's been kind of a long time. So long, I don't even have an excuse anymore. It's late, I've been working really hard for two days straight to get this uploaded before Christmas, and I don't feel like writing a long AN. I hope I haven't lost my readers/reviewers over the months. :\**

**Everything else aside, Enjoy the chapter, as usual. :)**

* * *

Through his blurry vision, Jonah managed to read, _3:26 AM_, from the glowing alarm clock that sat on the nightstand between his bed and Matt's. With a yawn, he groggily pulled himself out from under the blankets, and ascended the stairs. He never used the downstairs bathroom at night, or whenever Matt was down there with him, for his obsessive fear that Matt would be able to hear him through the thin door. He'd also amended himself to wearing long pants to bed after the embarrassing incident with Wendy.

_Wendy…_

Jonah caught himself sucking in a breath, as if to sigh dreamily, but he stopped himself and calmly exhaled through his nose.

In the upstairs bathroom, he turned to the sink to wash his hands, and took some time to eye himself judgmentally in the mirror―a habit of his, since he'd been reincarnated. He liked to search his face for the slightest difference, the most insignificant change from his previous life, a single feature the ritual may have changed. Perhaps his cheekbones were higher, his nose the tiniest degree crooked. He always failed to find anything.

What he did notice tonight, though, was that his bangs had grown―they were getting too long. The ends almost touched his eyelashes. His eyebrows were completely buried. He also noticed that the sore red blemish on his left cheek that'd appeared the day before he died was gone and healed now.

He reached up with his still-wet hands and used his finger to part his hair off to the side, brush his bangs away, and press it into place with the moisture. He looked so odd, he thought. It'd been forever since he'd had his hair like that. He used to wear it side-parted every day. His father would always use so much fixture to secure it in place that his hair felt like plastic. Then, when he turned fourteen, his mother said he had a face meant for bangs―even though his father thought it looked improper.

"Papa…" Jonah muttered, a knot twisting in his chest now. He hadn't thought about his parents much. He'd been too preoccupied with accepting his reincarnation in the first place, then with Virginia and Wendy, and just everything else. He never realized how much he missed them, how much he missed _everyone_. Even Aickman.

His eyes, nose, and throat burned, and he wanted to cry again. It had been a steady five days since his humiliating spillage over Virginia, and he had not really expressed too much emotion in that time.

He wondered what became of his family after he died. They must've saw the article from the paper; maybe a police officer did them the courtesy of properly informing them of his disappearance. What did they do after that? Did they pick up and move out, or did they stay in Goatswood? Did they even stay married?…Jonah knew they were dead now, and had been for years, even if they'd lived to be very old. This knowledge―and still not knowing enough―broke his heart. There were so many things he wanted to know, wanted to ask them.

Then, to interrupt his thoughts, he became enveloped in a moment of sharp awareness. Not pain, but the split-second feeling between incident and pain where one knows what happened, and is waiting for the pain to flare up at any―

Jonah gasped sharply in sudden agony. He ground his teeth together to prevent himself from screaming. The blistering sting crept from his fingertips to his hands and covered his arms. It began to engulf his legs and torso. Strangely, in all of it, he couldn't cry out―it was like his mouth was clamped irreversibly shut, his voice box lost at sea, his throat filled with a scalding acid.

His reflection in the bathroom mirror disappeared from his vision. Replacing it was the snarling, menacing burnt face of the boy―the one from earlier―the boy yelling for his father. He opened his mouth disturbingly, unnaturally wide and cried out once again.

Abruptly, Jonah's vision was interrupted as quickly as he'd been introduced to it. The boy's unearthly scream suddenly turned into the yelp of a startled prepubescent boy. Jonah snapped out of his trance to find himself no longer in front of the bathroom sink, but in the upstairs hallway not too far from his―Wendy's―bedroom. He glanced stupidly around the room until he located the source of the new scream. Billy winced away from him, his face a depiction of sheer horror. What was he so scared of? Had Billy seen the vision too―?

Wendy burst from her bedroom then, her eyes clouded with fatigue and confusion. "_What_ is going on?" she demanded.

Billy cried out again and rushed to Wendy's side. He gripped frantically at her satin pajama shirt for protection. "Billy! What're you―_Jonah_?" She glared back and forth between the boys, perplexed to the point of fear.

Jonah remained frozen with his mouth open, failing to locate appropriate words. Truthfully, he couldn't explain the situation because _he _had no idea what was going on, either.

"Billy…" Wendy moaned, "it's just Jonah. You don't have to get so freaked out."

" 'It's _just _Jonah?' " Billy said. "I don't care if he's technically alive now; I'm still not okay with a _dead kid_ wandering the house in the middle of the night!" He stared directly at Jonah as he spat the words "dead kid" into the air.

Jonah winced―So that was it. Billy had screamed because he was afraid of him, running into him in a silent dark hallway. Jonah felt sick to his stomach; he just wanted to tip over and die again. _I've always frightened children, _he thought miserably. _Children and adults alike._

Wendy scolded her cousin's behavior with words that escaped Jonah's perception in the midst of his wallowing thoughts. She then escorted him back to bed. When she returned, she wore an expression of deep concern. "Tired?" she asked him. He shook his head no, and she took his wrist and led him into her purple-walled bedroom. Instead of turning on the main ceiling lights, she flicked on the blue beaded lamp at her bedside. It filled the room with a calm glow that created shadows and silhouettes―Jonah liked it because it excused him from making direct eye contact.

"What happened?" she murmured.

"I don't know," he said, feeling stupid. "The last thing I remember―I was by the bathroom sink, and I saw something, a vision―and suddenly I found myself in the hallway, and Billy was screaming…" Wendy opened her mouth to ask a barrage of questions, but he stopped her with, "I don't want to talk about it right now. I'd rather figure it out for myself before I describe it, and as of now I have no idea…"

Wendy looked ready to protest, but she backed down and remained silent.

Jonah walked to the other side of the room, running his hand over the spot where the mural once was. "What a change," he said.

###

Wendy nodded in passive agreement to Jonah's statement. She watched those striking eyes move up and down the wall as they transported him back sixty years to the room that contained the mural. Her heart thudded in her chest; she could feel its pulse reverberating throughout her whole body, even in her fingertips. She could remember all too well the last time she and Jonah were alone in her bedroom; rather, alone at all.

_"Yet here's a spot…"_ he said, sounding very detached from reality, _"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!...Here's the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand…" _He turned to her and with a small smile, said, "Rather―_wall_."

"Shakespeare," she whispered, too stunned to return the smile. "Macbeth."

"Indeed. It means there's no way to erase the troubles of the past―no matter how much one tries to mask it. The birds still linger here, somewhere." Something dark passed behind his eyes, and he became very solemn. His gaze rested upon the carpeted floor. "And the poison, spilled over the wooden boards."

Eerie chills travelled up her spine and Wendy held her breath. Virginia. Instinctively she reached out and touched his shoulder.

"D'you think she's buried in the nearby cemetery?" he asked. His tone had returned to normal and his poetic manner of speaking was completely gone now.

She swallowed hard. "I don't know, Jonah…We could look someday." Immediately she regretted suggesting that.

"Soon. Perhaps we could look for my parents there as well. I hate to burden you with such a task, but as you're the only one who knows what's going on, and you're the only one whom I can trust to give me adequate amounts of privacy…"

"Of course," she said flatly. In all truthfulness, she _really _didn't want to take him to Virginia's gravesite. She couldn't bear to watch him break down again like he had before. And his _parents _would be involved, too. But she couldn't find it in herself take back her offer―after all, he was right: she wasthe only one he could trust to take him.

Jonah thanked her many times, until the words began to be interrupted with yawns, and he retreated back to bed. Wendy watched him go; she yearned so desperately to set his head in her lap again, but knew morning was rapidly approaching and it wouldn't be a good idea.

###

That morning, Jonah awoke to find the basement only dimly lit with sunrise; Matt's body remained a breathing lump underneath his covers. Jonah sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes, musing at how at first he could never get enough sleep―now he was plagued with insomnia.

Despite some hesitation stemming from last night's events, he pulled himself out of bed. Quietly, as not to disturb Matt, he pulled on a long-sleeved tee shirt and oversized hand-me-down jeans which relied on a belt to keep from falling to his ankles.

He could hear the sizzling of a frying pan upstairs―Sara up bright and early preparing breakfast for her family. Jonah felt a rush of fondness for her―even his own mother waited to start breakfast until both he and his father had woken and dressed. He quickly chased the thought away, however, for he'd forbidden himself from thinking about his parents, until he could (hopefully) visit their graves and gain some closure.

Upstairs, he found Sara in the kitchen as he'd expected, smiling and humming as she scrambled an egg. She heard his footsteps and turned. Her face lit up joyfully when her eyes locked on him, and she rushed over to give him a hug, which Jonah stiffly backed out of. She gave him an odd look, but didn't bother him about it, for she knew why he did so―she wasn't his mother, she couldn't replace Alma Herrell. He didn't want to be touched.

"Good morning," she said, and went back to the stove.

He replied, "Good morning." He realized then, that on the night he'd had his breakdown over Virginia, Matt had told them they were expecting a "surprise" from Sara and Peter that very night…which never came. "Sara?" he asked, eyebrows knitted.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Weren't we…supposed to have a 'surprise' a few days ago? Some news that never arrived?"

Jonah sensed a presence behind him. "Well, how convenient that you asked," said a voice suddenly, causing Jonah to jump ever so slightly. Peter arrived at Jonah's left and ruffled his uncombed black hair as he walked by. "We _were_ going to announce it," he continued, "but first, we need your help. What a better time to ask you than now?"

Jonah swallowed. "_My _help?" What could they possibly want with him? He had the sickest feeling it had something to do with his clairvoyance.

Peter cleared his throat, while Sara quietly faded into the background to let her husband do all the explaining. "When we left that night, we drove about a mile out east of town to look at a new house. This house is beautiful, big―all of you kids could each have your own bedroom―and…old. Now, from our previous experiences involving old houses, we'd like to have the house…_looked at_, to check and see if there's…anything in there."

"You don't have to edit your words with me," Jonah said, irritated. "I know what you're after. You found an old house and you want me to use my powers to see if it's haunted, so you don't get stuck having to _help _anyone like you did last time."

"That's not what we mean, sweetie," cooed Sara. "It's just―"

Jonah interrupted her, "I know, I know. I understand your point." He actually didn't, but he wasn't about to sit through her explanation. "In fact―I'd rather this 'new house' of ours isn't haunted, either." That, however, was true. Secretly, his heart rejoiced at the notion of getting a different house: no more basement, no more bad memories, no more vivid residual hauntings of himself getting smacked around.

"So," Peter said, rubbing his hands together like an eager businessman settling a deal, "shall we check it out today, while we're out getting your new clothes?"

"Oh, God, I nearly forgot about that…" Jonah moaned._ What an awful day this will be,_ he thought._ Not the most awful, but pretty far up there, I predict._

###

"Wendy!" Matt waved his hand between Wendy's face and the book she had it buried in to get her attention. "They're gone."

It took her a moment or two to realize what he was getting at. She nervously set her book down and began filling him in. Matt's jaw dropped immediately and stayed that way throughout the whole story. At one point, he had to stop her and just _think _for a minute or two so he could let his whirling thoughts catch up to the new information.

"And _last night_," she sighed finally in closure, "he told me he was having visions."

"What kind of visions?"

Wendy shook her head. "He wouldn't specify. But apparently they made him sleepwalk or something. Billy ran into him in the middle of the night and freaked out. I could tell Jonah felt really bad…"

Matt only gave this a moment's thought and a concerned shake of the head, for he'd had what he liked to call a "light bulb epiphany"―he had an idea on how to help close up some of the mysteries surrounding Jonah's past. "Wendy," he gasped, "I've got it! You said you found all this neat stuff in your friend's basement…well, we have a completely un-fire-damaged basement of our own. With old cabinets. And stuff."

She mulled this over for a moment, then she looked up. "You wanna?"

"If I didn't want to, I wouldn't have brought it up."

###

_1…2…3! _Wendy tugged as hard as she could on the dusty cabinet handle. She leaned her whole weight against it. After a few grueling seconds, the door came flying open, which sent the crouching Wendy onto the floor rather dramatically. "Ouch!" she cried, examining her left index finger. Her nail was broken very short, and a tiny spot of blood emerged from her cuticle. She sucked on it for a moment until the sting subsided.

"I told you to let me do it," Matt said as he pulled the contents from the cabinet. They wrinkled their noses at the musty, decaying smell that emanated from the objects.

Wendy sighed and opened a small tin box. Inscribed on the inside was, _Penny Street Café, Hartford, Connecticut― 1909, _but it was otherwise empty. Matt quickly searched through the remainder of the objects, which all turned out to be souvenir-like trinkets as well.

She allowed Matt to open the rest of the cabinets. One was empty, one contained more crazy morticians' tools. "I don't think we're going to find too much," she said regretfully as he worked on the fourth cabinet.

"Don't be such a _wet blanket_, Wendy." He looked at her and grinned. Then the smirk disappeared. "I'm sorry. That was lame," he muttered, giving an enormous final tug on the cabinet door. It flew open in typical fashion, and an avalanche of musty, yellow-paged books tumbled out. Some were thick, heavy hardcovers, some were paperbacks with pieces of the flimsy covers ripped away.

Wendy picked one of the hardcovers up and read the title. "_Thus Spoke Zarathustra._" She opened it and flipped to the title page. In elegant, loopy cursive so fancy she struggled to make it out, it read, _J.W. Herrell, Birthday gift, Aged Fifteen. _"Jonah's book!" she gasped. She picked up another, _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_ by Mark Twain. _Jonah W. Herrell―Trip to Albany, New York―1921. _In awe, she searched through the collection of recognizable classic titles. "What are all of Jonah's books doing here?" she wondered aloud.

"Maybe Aickman confiscated them…" Matt theorized, which made perfect sense. He held one of the paperbacks in his hand.

"What's that one you've got?" she inquired.

He handed her the book. "It's not a _book _book, like a novel. It's a journal. Handwritten. But I can't read it. Why did everyone have such damn fancy handwriting back then?"

Wendy took it from him with a roll of her eyes. "Let me do it." She opened it to a random page about a quarter into the journal, and read aloud,

"_Dearest Josef,_

_Happy birthday, my beautiful son. It's a powerful shock to think that you would be twenty-four years of age on this day. Perhaps married with a baby boy of your own by now. Only God knows where your mother Marja is. Last I heard, she resided in our native __Rättvik, but that was years ago. Never mind, however. Perhaps she is writing letters to you also and you know all about her._

_I wanted to tell you about how, the other day, I saw the handsomest young boy in the town square the other day. He had to have been about six or seven years old, and he looked just like you did at that age. In fact, when I first laid eyes upon him, I swore I was seeing your ghost! His mother had just bought him some sweets, and I related with the woman―how could one not spoil such a precious child? _

_If only I could send you some birthday chocolates where you are, now._

_Sincerest love,_

_Your father Ramsey."_

The cousins were silent .

###

Jonah had a piercing headache. The stimulus around him was too much, _too _much. He felt as though his brain were about to implode on itself from all this strangeness, all these foreign ideas and contraptions he'd once viewed as inconceivable. It didn't help that the car was on the road again, shooting down the road faster than he cared to know. The fast car rides were, Jonah feared, something he'd never get used to.

"I'm tired," he suddenly blurted to Sara and Peter.

Peter assured him, "We're almost there. Just give the house a quick once-over and you can go home and rest."

"You're doing great, Jonah. You're handling the adjustment very well," Sara said. Jonah didn't believe her. Surely he hadn't looked normal at the shopping mall, gawking at the people, the fashions, all the things that moved on their own, and the _lights, so many lights…_

He ignored Sara and mustered the courage to glance out the car window. Everything whipped by at a speed that made his stomach swoop, but he recognized the way―groups of randomly scattered Victorian neighborhoods along ill-kept county roads. "What does this house look like?" he asked.

"It's big, white clapboard siding, tall white pillars in the front. It looks sort of like a Southern plantation estate. Wonderful house, it just needs fixing up."

Jonah's blood ran cold, driven through his body by a startled pounding heart. He knew _exactly _where they were going. He suppressed his mournful whimpers, hand clamped over his mouth until they pulled up the driveway―which was now gravel. He bit his tongue, clenched his hands into fists, held his breath―anything to conceal his emotions from the Campbells.

Its striking grandeur had faded some due to years of abandonment, but pure sentimentality made Jonah's knees weak and shaky. Here it was―he'd returned, finally.

Blindly, he wandered up the desolate stone pathway toward the house, trying his hardest not to break into a run. Sara and Peter followed him, which he did not want. He stopped, turned to them, and managed a steady voice. "I'd rather be alone for this task. It'll make things easier with no other presences besides myself in the house." Really, there was no truth to this statement―he knew how to differentiate between a living soul and a dead one―but he couldn't bear to let them watch him. He knew that, once inside his former home, his feelings would be impossible to control. The married couple reluctantly agreed.

With trembling hands, Jonah turned the knob.


	15. Jonah's Revierie, EDITED

**A/N: Well, not so long an update this time...Considering all the crazy, nasty, bittersweet shtuff that's been going on with me lately!**

**Happy early Anti-Valentine's Day!**

* * *

His heart rupturing with a multitude of unnamable emotions, Jonah turned the creaky door knob and entered. A smile of unfamiliar depth split his face; his chest shuttered with an overwhelmed breath.

He set his satchels down and removed his hat. His mother must've heard him come in. She came running down the hallway with tears already streaming down her face. "Jonah! Oh, my Jonah!" she cried as she claimed him in an unyielding embrace. He returned the hugs. Too long it had been―much too long.

"Mama," he sobbed, "I'm so sorry." He repeated this phrase over and over. "I'm sorry, Mama. I'm sorry I left. I won't ever leave you and Papa again, I promise."

His mother broke the embrace. She eyed him very seriously and grasped his face in her hands. "Don't be sorry, my baby. It was our fault. We should never have put you―" She swallowed, daring not to specify further. "We should have helped you, nurtured you, never abandoned you."

Jonah tried to swallow the emotion in his throat, lest his father enter the foyer and see him get too sensitive. In a broken whisper, he muttered, "It doesn't matter whose fault it is right now. All I care about is that I'm okay and I'm alive and I'm back home now. I can pick up my life where I left off―Where's Father?"

"He's in his study, drawing up a new floor plan. Go―go surprise him. We weren't expecting you back until later this evening."

Jonah rushed upstairs to the thick mahogany doors just next to his parents' bedroom. He broke the rules and didn't knock before barging in on his father, who was busy with his pen and paper. "Papa?" he breathed. James Herrell looked up from his project; immediately his firm, concentrated face melted. He dropped his pen to the floor and jogged across the room to meet his son. Jonah guessed that his father's first instinct would be to grab his hand and shake it vigorously, but he was shocked by the feeling of being hugged by his papa for the first time since he was little. Awkwardly, he returned it.

James kissed the top of Jonah's head, which was conveniently just under his chin―his son had grown taller in the past few months.

"You're early," he stated, breathlessly, as if he had no idea what else to say. Jonah nodded into his shoulder.

"I missed you so much, Papa."

"I missed you too, my boy. Jonah."

###

Jonah snapped into reality. He fumbled through a moment of excessive confusion, trying to figure out where he was, what he was doing, why he ached so badly from the inside out. He found himself propped upright against a cracked plaster wall with stained, peeling floral wallpaper. He sat on a dusty wooden floor, his legs sprawled out in front of him. One of his sneakers had come untied. As he redid it, he realized what he was supposed to be doing.

Carefully, he leaned most of his weight against the wall and inched his body upward, pushing with his legs, unsure of his balance. Once he was completely standing, he glanced around the grim desolation that used to be the sitting room of his family's estate. He physically gagged. It sickened him greatly to see his childhood home decayed this way. Most of the original furniture remained, cushions torn and chairs lying on their sides like corpses. The grand crystal chandelier miraculously still hung from the ceiling, but it looked almost _sad_ to be up there, suspended and alone for all these years.

Jonah wanted to scream, wanted to curse, throw up, never come out again.

He wanted to die. There, alone, in that barren wasteland of a living space. Let his body rot along with the house.

He was supposed to be looking for ghosts. There weren't any. It'd been obvious from the moment he'd walked in. But he planned to lie to Sara and Peter, tell them the place was _infested _with evil ghosts, so they wouldn't live there and make the space their own. The house was for _his _family, no one else's. As badly as he wished to move out of the Aickman house once and for all, he couldn't bear the thought of being moved from one tragic place from his past to the next. It would do nothing at all to help him "get better."

Squeezing his eyes shut, Jonah took a moment to clear his thoughts and regain the best composure he could before facing Sara and Peter.

He stepped outside, where the couple was sitting patiently on the front steps. "Sara?" he called.

"Sweetie," she said as they approached him with faces eager for results. "Are you okay?" she asked. Jonah nodded.

Peter probed, "How was it? Is there anything in there?"

Jonah glared at them, watching them lock up under his gaze. He'd always been able to silence people and hold them in suspense by staring at them. In his mind he attempted to construct his lie, to string the words of falsity together and say them, but he couldn't. His mind went blank. "It's clean," he heard himself say. He couldn't lie.

"Nothing's in there?"

Jonah surrendered to his inability to lie to his caregivers. "Nothing. It's empty."

Peter grinned and rubbed his hands together, reminding Jonah of Aickman for a terrifying second. "That's great. Thank you, Jonah. You're an amazing help." Jonah didn't respond.

On the car ride home, he leaned his head against the cool, moist car window and pretended to sleep to avoid conversation. However, he _could_ still eavesdrop on Sara and Peter's conversation.

"He's so sensitive, Peter," Sara whispered, "we shouldn't have put him up to this. Did you see him when he came out? He looked so―I don't know…He looked so _sad_."

"He always seems sad. It's just the way he is," said Peter. "He's fine, Sara. Just tired. Look at him conked out back there. He's had a very long, big day."

###

Wendy broke the extensively long period of silence. "Aickman had a son of his own," she muttered.

Matt appeared utterly frustrated. "That's how it always goes. We go looking for answers, and all we get are more questions."

She mulled over his words and said, "Well, let's look for some other things that might be helpful." She flipped through the pages of the journal, skimming through entries hopelessly similar to the one they'd already encountered. Knowing their time was running out before everyone arrived home, she skipped to about a quarter from the end of the journal. Out tumbled two photographs. Two dark-haired adolescent boys. The entry that accompanied the photos was dated January 1926.

Matt picked one of them up. "It's Jonah," he stated proudly. Wendy took the photo from him and examined it. A handsome boy with dark hair and a wide dimpled grin stared back at her. "It's not Jonah," she corrected. "It can't be. The picture's too old―look at his clothes. And Jonah doesn't have dimples on his cheeks." She turned the photo over and read the back, _V__å__r son Josef, i aldrama femton, p__å__ vintern 1907._ "Whatever it says back here, it's Josef, and it was taken in 1907. Jonah wasn't even born then."

He held his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay, you proved me wrong. Sorry I don't stare at Jonah closely enough to notice he doesn't have dimples. Jeez." Wendy felt her face go hot at his subtle accusation that she admired Jonah and took note of his every feature. What embarrassed her more was that it was true. "But it _does_ look like him."

"It does." Wendy picked up the other photograph, and couldn't control her indulgent smile. "This one, however, _is _Jonah." Little Jonah, a bit younger than the sixteen-year-old she knew him as, wore a dark vest over a white shirt and polka-dotted tie. He didn't smile―in fact, his face looked quite stern―but in his eyes there was a youthful sparkle that smiled instead of his mouth. He looked healthy, if slightly bony with a growing frame that had yet to be filled in, and his cheeks had a tint of color imminent even in the fuzzy old portrait. His hair was in its normal style, but his bangs were shorter and cut more unevenly instead of straight across. Jonah folded his scrawny little arms and the shot cut off just below them.

A lump suddenly lodged itself in Wendy's throat. Wordlessly, she handed the photo to Matt so he could have a look. "He looks so innocent and healthy," she breathed.

Her cousin volunteered, "I think that little kid in the entry you read was Jonah. The one Aickman saw in town with his mother. And the candy. Aickman noticed that Jonah looked like Josef―hell, even their _names _sound alike. I think Aickman missed Josef so much―it sounds like he died or something―and he wanted to make Jonah his son, no matter what it took. It helped that Jonah was a medium that could contact the dead―maybe Aickman wanted Jonah to contact Josef for him, and that's how this whole séance business started." Matt's eyes were wide and triumphant―for once he had come up with a genius hypothesis on his own.

"That's perfect, Matt. You have your moments, don't you?"

Matt parted his lips to respond, but he stopped. "Voices upstairs," he hissed. "Hurry." The cousins gathered up their antique findings and stuffed them back into the cupboards. When Matt wasn't looking, Wendy discreetly grabbed the photo of Jonah they'd found and slipped it into her pocket.

They closed the final cupboard doors and rushed out of the mortuary. As soon as they emerged into the main part of the basement, they heard the call of a familiar voice, "Matt? Matt, are you down here?"accompanied by footsteps at the top of the stairs. The cousins frantically threw themselves onto Matt's bed, sitting in casual positions and pretending to be in simple conversation.

Jonah reached the bottom of the stairs. "Oh. Hi there, Wendy." He glanced nervously between the mortuary door, the bathroom door, and the staircase. "Um―uh―I'll be right back down, just a moment," he said and jogged back upstairs.

Wendy watched him until he disappeared around the corner at the top of the stairs. "What was that all about?" she asked.

Matt chuckled. "He's so weird. He won't pee in this bathroom if I'm down here, or anyone else is. He's paranoid that we can hear him through the door, and he still thinks I haven't noticed. Timid as hell, he is."

Wendy nudged him and scoffed at his rude bluntness. Then she sighed. "Listen, Matt, I'm going upstairs. I want to…mull all of this over." Truthfully, though, she saw this as an opportunity to meet Jonah upstairs and talk to him. She didn't know what about. She just wanted to converse with him. It was beginning to dawn on her how much she had missed him in the few hours he'd been gone that day.

She caught him just as he was about to descend the stairs on the second floor. She gave him the kindest smile she could muster while in the heat of his stare. "Hey."

"Hello." Now that she saw him up close, she could see the exhaustion plaguing his face. Despite, a weak smile tugged at his lips.

"How was your day?"

The smirk disappeared. "Horrible. Completely horrible. I hated it."

She seized her opportunity. "Do you want to talk about it?" She indicated with her eyes that she meant to bring him down the hall to her room and chat like they'd done before.

Jonah turned around and walked in that direction without indicating agreement. Once in her bedroom with the door closed, Jonah began pacing, head down, with his hands shoved in his pockets. She sat down on her bed, hoping that he would soon sit down, too. His pacing made her uneasy. "What's wrong?" she asked gently. "You know you can tell me."

"We're getting a new house," he murmured. Wendy gasped. "That's the surprise we were promised but never got. It's an old house and today they made _me _go into the abandoned thing and check for ghosts!" His voice grew more and more desperate with each word. He stopped pacing and glared straight at her. "And you'll never guess which house it is! It's _my _family's old estate! My former home!" His voice grew louder and wobbled as he spoke. "It looks so awful in there. Everything's dark and dusty and ruined…They just let it decay," he added in a devastated broken whisper.

Wendy froze, completely stunned. So much had happened to him in one day, while she and Matt rudely inspected his past without his permission.

Jonah moaned softly. He closed his eyes, but still refused to sit. "There was an ornate wallpaper with roses, you see. When I was little, I would pass the time by tracing my finger along the flowers. I wanted to draw the design on a piece of paper someday…" He stood there and rambled on, in a slurred monotone voice, describing what the house used to look like and what it did now. It went on like that for a few minutes, until suddenly he stopped. He chewed his lower lip and swallowed.

This tore at Wendy's heart. "Jonah…" she said tenderly. Suddenly she couldn't control herself anymore; she wanted to, she _needed_ to. She stood up and wrapped her arms around Jonah's waist, pulling him close. He didn't resist.

Time froze, along with the two teenagers' bodies. For that period of time, nothing happened, nothing moved, except the tempo of Jonah's heart, which Wendy listened to with fascinated intrigue.

"Wendy?" Jonah said, finally. His voice sounded different, with Wendy's head pressed so close to his throat. It tickled her ear and gave her goosebumps.

"Yeah?"

"You're still taking me to the graveyard, aren't you?"

She hugged him tighter. "Of course," she whispered.

Jonah broke the embrace but held her by her shoulders, staring deeply into her eyes. Wendy became aware of how strikingly close their faces were to one another. She could feel his breath, which came in shallow, quivering puffs. Her chest contracted with excitement.

"Thank you," he said, with the most heartrending sincerity. He released her shoulders and walked away.

###

"How is he?" asked the Revered, to a pale and yawning Peter Campbell.

"Making progress every day," the scientist replied. He wandered about the Reverend's small but cozy office. The lights were naturally dim but this was aided by candles and a warm, crackling fireplace. Curiously he eyed all the superstitious trinkets and tools placed about the room. Located in the corner nearest the fireplace there was a pedestal-type stand of some sort, topped with a purple velvet cushion. Atop the cushion rested a lump protectively covered by a satin kerchief. Peter approached it and removed the covering. He recognized the object immediately.

"Amazing what a silly rock will do, huh?" he chuckled.

"If it's of any useful information," stated the Reverend, "I don't believe the stone was formed naturally. It had to have been manufactured somehow, many years ago, by people who knew a _lot_ more than we do."

###

(The following weekend).

_She tugged his wrist and led him through the hallways at the very heart of the dance hall. "Where're you taking me?" he giggled._

_She turned to face him and held her long, slender finger to her lips. "Shhh." He did his best to quiet his laughter. But she laughed too, sweet little puffs of breath as she pulled him to their destination. "We're almost there." They arrived at a shabby door with chipping white paint. Through the cracked little window on the door, moonlight poured in and illuminated the dark hallway._

_"How did you know this was here?" he asked in wonder as they stepped out into the courtyard-type space. The courtyard was small, enclosed by four ill-tended brick walls with unhealthy vines growing up the side. On the cracked pavement ground there lied some dead foliage randomly strewn pebbles. The slow, jazzy melodies of the band were slightly audible from the main dancing hall. All of this created an oddly romantic aura that sent excited shivers through his body._

_"How could you ask such a silly question? You _know _my father himself designed this building when I was five."_

_"Well, _my _father never lets me see the plans he draws up," he retorted. Without another word, she seized his shoulders and backed him up against one of the vine-covered walls. She kissed him passionately on his mouth, and the whole world disappeared for a blissful moment. Pressed between the wall and his love, no chance of abandonment―he felt truly safe. _

Jonah glared at himself in the mirror, reveling in the memory he knew he shouldn't be allowing himself experience. Perhaps, though, he reasoned, it was a good idea to revisit the times they'd had together. Perhaps it would finally bring on the harsh fact that she really _was _dead and wake up the numbness he felt. Also, the memories fascinated him―he marveled at how he'd once been capable of maintaining so much passion inside him.

Matt poked his head in through the open bathroom door. "What the hell are you doing in here?" he demanded with fake malevolence. Then he burst into smiles and became genuinely interested. "What are you getting all fancied up for?" He eyed Jonah in his slim dark-wash jeans and navy blue sweater pulled over a collared dress shirt.

"I'm not," Jonah said. "You see, now that I have my own pieces, I'm trying to dress in outfits based on what I would've worn back then. You know, so I don't feel quite so foreign. Besides, Wendy and I are going for a walk this afternoon, we've decided. I want to see in more detail what the town has become." Jonah felt proud of himself―one of the best-executed lies he'd ever told. Partly because it was half-true. They _were _going for a walk―not to see the town, he couldn't have cared less about the wretched town―but their destination was the graveyard. Finally.

"_You're _going with _Wendy_?" Matt sounded annoyed.

"Yes." Jonah crinkled his eyebrows in confusion. "And…?"

Matt looked down at the floor, shaking his head, and spat, "Nothing."

* * *

**That. Was a horrible ending. But I wanted to save the graveyard scene for next chapter, for space/length/time purposes!**

**Review, please!**


	16. The Presence of Marja Stromqvist

The walk to the graveyard was dolefully silent for most of the way. Wendy attempted to make small chat, but Jonah responded to them all with quiet, short, often one-worded answers, which clued her in that he didn't want to talk. He had so much on his mind, she figured. He walked with his head down, staring at his shoes crunching over the leaf-covered sidewalk, his hands shoved deep in his jean pockets. Wendy wanted desperately to console him, take the edge off his mental strain―if only she knew how, if only he'd let her.

Perhaps this day would help, she told herself. Seeing his loved ones, gaining some closure. Then again, she never knew. Not with Jonah.

They approached the black wrought-iron gates of the cemetery. "This is it," she said gently. Without a word, he ascended the uphill pathway that led up into the heart of the graveyard.

"It's so big," he muttered. The little headstones seemed to stretch on forever in all directions, like debris of a jet airplane crash scattered over a countryside. Wendy suggested that she'd help him look, that she should go left and he search right.

After numerous long minutes of searching, Wendy's eye was captured by a fantastic, well-kept granite tombstone, with a square base and a top fashioned into a heart.

"Jonah!" she called over the rest of the cemetery; she could just barely see his dark little head peeking from behind an enormous tombstone. "Jonah! I found her. She's here." Her heart thundered in her chest and her fingertips tingled in anticipation―here was the grave of the young lady she'd been haunted by for almost a month. The sight made it so much more real; Virginia was indeed real, after all of this―here was solid proof: her very resting place. She was under the very ground Wendy stood on. Wendy heard Jonah's footsteps frantically approaching, which made it even worse. Here came Virginia's boy. _Virginia's._ He'll always be Virginia's, Wendy thought in sudden intense anguish.

What was the point in pursuing Jonah anyway? He'd never love her for _her_; she'd always be some makeshift stand-in for Virginia. After all, you only get one soulmate in your lifetime. Jonah had already found his, and she was gone. Who was Wendy to try and get nearly as close to him as Virginia had been? She resented her supernatural counterpart for making her perform earthly tasks at her own emotional expense.

She ripped herself out of her wallowing and tried to focus on just being there for Jonah, as a friend, as a helper. She glanced down at him, knelt next to the grave, completely still. His face held no visible expression—just blankness, numbness. He blinked, turned, and looked up at her.

"Look here, look at this poem," he urged her. She obeyed and shakily knelt down next to him, careful to keep her distance.

Inscribed upon her grave:

_Because I could not stop for Death ―  
He kindly stopped for me ―  
The carriage held but just ourselves  
And immortality._

"Emily Dickinson," Wendy stated. "One of her most famous poems."

"Dickinson was her favorite poet," Jonah murmured. It was then that Wendy noticed his emotion and grief beginning to surface. He sniffed and rubbed his nose, while his eyes and nose and lips became reddish and trembling. _Here we go,_ Wendy thought.

On a normal day, she would have reached out to rub his shoulder, whispered that it was okay to cry because if anyone had to right to he was the one, and that he shouldn't feel ashamed of his emotions because, after all, physical manifestations of emotions such as tears were a part of being alive. In this situation she looked away and chewed her lip, keeping her hands to herself.

###

_1926_

_Virginia arrived dressed in her most adorable semi-formal attire. Jonah shuffled nervously at such a sight. Good God—he had it so bad for her. Her red beaded dress brushed against her kneecaps, giving way to sheer nude hosiery, and her shiny black heeled shoes. Perfect for their date of catching a Saturday matinee at the picture palace. The picture they planned to see was "_La Boheme" _with the lovely Lillian Gish starring._

_The girl herself had suggested the date. An avid fan of both the Puccini opera and Lillian Gish, already she considered this her favorite movie despite the fact that she had yet to see it._

_They met outside the front doors of the venue, greeted each other with a quick, innocent kiss, like the ones they always shared in their tentative newborn romance. The couple sat in the elaborate, cushy seats, toward the back and left. Most other people crowded toward the middle center, so this spot would ensure them some privacy to cuddle without judgment during the romantic picture._

_In summary, Virginia ended up gasping, chewing her nails, and giving tiny little squeals that only Jonah could hear. To be honest, he didn't pay much attention to the movie itself, for her cute reactions were sufficiently entertaining. He calmly listened to the background music and guessed what was happening judging upon his knowledge of the opera and his girl's face. During a less interesting lull in the action of the movie, Virginia, filled with the desperate romance and admiration she was absorbing, planted her mouth on his. The kiss created a rather loud "smack," but no one in the hall seemed to notice._

_Jonah rather liked it, that kiss filled with so much passion, passion as they'd never shared before. He leaned in for more. They attempted to remain as quiet and discreet as they could. Finally Virginia pulled away, sensing an escalation in the action with the intensifying background music. Jonah, dizzily happy from the kisses, turned and actually paid attention._

_They watched Rudolphe and Mimi's violent quarrel, her weak collapse into illness. Virginia squeezed his hand as she knew what was next. Both of them teared up as Rudolphe encouraged Mimi that she would live and become the most beautiful woman in Paris, only for her to die a minute later._

_This forced Jonah to consider―what would he do without Virginia? What if she suddenly died?_

_He quickly admonished himself for thinking ahead of himself, creating wild things in his imagination for things that simply could _not _happen in the near future._

###

Now, delicately teary-eyed as he had been then, Jonah stared at her grave and hated himself for how wrong he'd been. He remembered the final shot in the movie, of Rudolphe clutching Mimi's hand and staring off, remembering a wonderful time they'd had together. How similar Jonah was to him.

He took in a slow, shaky breath to try and soothe himself. As he felt the cool, moist air fill his lungs, something began to lift inside of him. Began to fade.

Rudolphe had to have moved on at some point, hadn't he? It was never revealed what became of him. Jonah liked to think that he accepted her death and fell in love again, maybe because that was what he so desperately wanted to do himself.

That's what Mimi would've wanted Rudolphe to do. It then dawned upon him that Virginia would have wanted him to do the same. As long as he was alive, as long as he was healthy. Was that not always her main concern? Caring for him first, then romancing him?

He reached out and lightly ran his fingers over her name, the date of her death, the poem. This was her final resting place; there was nothing that would bring her above ground and breathe life into her again. But, by some odd fate, _he _could breathe. He felt more and more tranquil with every deep breath he took. Finally, he blotted away the tears, now gone cold, with his jacket sleeve.

He felt appropriate going through with it now. He knew what he had to do, _wanted_ to do. Jonah exhaled one of these precious breaths by whispering, "Wendy…"

###

Wendy reluctantly turned her head to meet Jonah's eyes. They were no longer teary, and his entire face was relaxed, peaceful, but focused. He almost seemed to be in a trance.

She replied, "Hm?"

He did not respond with words. Instead, he gradually reached toward her hand, and grasped it. She held her breath. All her previously resentful thoughts melted away, in part because the feeling of his warm palm made her mind blank, and also because—through that blankness—she felt the glimmer of hope she hadn't known before. She struggled not to show any signs of hesitation.

Jonah scooted himself closer to her on the ground. He tilted his head to one side and Wendy knew instantly what would happen. As their faces were only centimeters away, his courage seemed to falter and he stalled with their noses gently brushing against one another's.

Wendy couldn't stand the lingering suspense anymore. She closed the gap between their lips.

###

Matt slouched forlornly on the sofa, watching _Ghost Busters _with an odd feeling knotting in his stomach, as he felt while watching anything about the paranormal that was ridiculously far from accurate.

A river of fluorescent green "ectoplasm." Matt wanted to kick something.

His younger brother approached him. "What's the matter with you?" Billy inquired dryly.

"Nothing."

Billy rolled his eyes. "Everyone in this house sure does get bored whenever _he's _gone."

"I don't care so much that he's gone," Matt stated. "I care about who he's gone with."

The younger sibling's eyes widened and he became exasperated in sheer agreement. "I _know_, Matt! Isn't it _so_ weird? They're always together and she always takes his side in everything."

Matt clapped his brother's shoulder. "I thought I was the only one who noticed! It's like, she's _stealing_ him. He tells her everything secret but won't say anything to me. It's not fair."

Billy's smile disappeared. "I was thinking of it more like _he _was the one stealing _her_."

"No," Matt insisted, "Jonah's a timid kid. He latches onto whoever makes him comfortable. Wendy takes advantage of this and she won't leave him alone long enough to let him try and socialize with anyone else around here anymore. I mean, I thought it'd be _me_ getting confided in, being told all the secrets."

"Gee. Wonder what kind of secrets he's hiding."

Matt shrugged, then became sober. "Not happy ones. He's…._sad_, Billy. Come on. I also think you should try and be nicer to him. It's not like he asked for any of this just to bother you. He's a good kid and never meant to hurt anyone."

Billy scoffed at this. He stood up from the couch and started walking away. Matt heard him mutter, "Poor Jonah, poor Jonah, poor little baby Jonah," in a mockingly high-pitched voice. Matt wished to drag his brother outside and punch him, but simply didn't feel like actually carrying it out. He didn't have the violent energy, he reasoned with himself.

###

_James Howard Herrell  
__b. 17 October, 1883  
__d. 23 June 1957_

_Alma Gretchen Westberg-Herrell  
__b. 4 January, 1887  
__d. 15 June 1979_

Jonah stood in front of the giant, elaborate tombstone, his arm wrapped tightly around Wendy. He was so sick of kneeling before graves―it seemed like a sulky thing to do, and the only thing he was more sick of than kneeling was sulking. He clung to the feeling of peaceful neutrality he'd obtained just a few sweet minutes prior.

What struck him the most was his father's death date―thirty years and five days after his own. His mother had died in June as well. June seemed to be a month of death for his family. He pointed this out to Wendy, who chuckled uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry," Jonah said. "Sometimes―well, a lot of times I say things that people deem creepy or disturbing. It's a rather bad habit."

"No, no, no!" Wendy gasped with rapid succession of the word 'no.' "Oh, Jonah, it's fine. I love everything you say, I honestly love to hear you talk about anything, no matter how creepy. I just think it's sad―"

Jonah gently set his finger on her lips. "Hush, Wendy, it's okay. Let us both hush. It seems we're both too conscious of our words. We should just forget."

She whispered, "You're right. We're both awkward, we both think too much…"

As soon as she finished trailing off her sentence, Jonah felt a cold drop of liquid on his cheek, and then another on his scalp. Wendy reached up and wiped one off her forehead. "Oh, dear God," Jonah moaned, but with excitement, "we're going to get rained on!" The couple bid a quick final good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Herrell before dashing out of the cemetery, grinning the entire way.

Not a minute later, as they jogged down the sidewalk toward home, it began to downpour. Jonah took off his jacket so he could offer it to Wendy to protect her hair with. However, she refused him by yelling over the pouring rain, "Now's not the time be a gentleman, Jonah! It's no use―we're both already soaked anyway!" But he couldn't just run next to her and leave her all alone; the thought bothered him. So, he grabbed her hand and grasped it tightly through the remainder of their journey.

As they approached the muddy, soaked gravel driveway, he stopped her and took her in a hug. "Wendy, I know it sounds stupid, and plain silly, but I've sort of―I've always had this desire to kiss in the rain…like in the books and movies."

She laughed at him. "Jonah! What a cliché you are!" Then she tilted her face up at him (which wasn't far―as she was a tall girl and he a short boy). "Well, hurry up, Rudy Valentino, I wanna go inside and get dry." The couple brought their smiling mouths into a kiss, but it only lasted a couple of seconds.

"It's too wet," Jonah chuckled, "I think I got rainwater in my mouth!"He paused, turned serious. "But Wendy, you do realize, once inside that house, we can never kiss, or hug, or other trite things that couples do…we have to keep it a secret."

Wendy's playful smile died on the spot and she became somber. "You're right. But we'll find opportunities. I promise, okay? I swear."

He nodded and gave her hand one more quick squeeze before they approached the house.

###

The family sat around the dinner table, including the damp-haired Jonah and Wendy, clad in pajama pants and thick sweaters. There wasn't much conversation to speak of, just the simple eating routine of Matt chomping like an animal, the kids noisily chewing with their mouths open, and Jonah picking at his food without much interest.

Peter conquered his usual task of breaking the tentative silence. "So, Jonah, did you and Wendy enjoy your walk? Besides getting soaked?"

The two exchanged awkward grins. "Actually," Jonah said in a half-lie, "getting rained on was one of the most interesting parts. The town is boring; not a whole lot has changed. Same buildings, different cars, different people, more lights."

Wendy watched in disgust as her aunt and uncle pretended not to be fascinated at the fact that this was the most words Jonah had ever uttered at the dinner table. She'd noticed it before, but now that she'd experienced more than anyone how truly human and normal he was, it bothered her how they treated him like an experiment, a nutcase that could either explode at any moment or make himself magically better.

"That's right," Peter said. "Goatswood is a very historic town. Most of the buildings have been around as long as Jonah has, even longer."

"Whoa, Dad. Did you just call Jonah _old?" _Billy interjected with a sadistic grin.

"I am old," Jonah said. "I'm seventy-six years old. Perhaps I should wear my pants distastefully high, wear ugly shoes, fall asleep randomly while drooling and refer to everyone around here as 'little young'uns.' "

Matt smacked his hand down on the table and laughed. "Where did _you _suddenly find a sense of humor?" he asked Jonah.

"Nowhere. It's just true. And you know what they say about respecting your elders." Jonah folded his arms and grinned conceitedly, hinting that by that principle, everyone in the house would be at his mercy.

_I already am at his mercy_, Wendy thought with a shudder.

Peter cleared his throat to get everyone's attention back on topic. "Anyway, where I was going with this, is that we―as a family, all seven of us, are going to move into a new house. Rather, a beautiful old house." There―Peter dropped the anvil. The children and Matt gasped. Wendy and Jonah struggled to act surprised, though they already knew it. The outgoing Jonah shrunk back into his small, dark shell.

There were protests, comments, and questions. Eventually the parents won the children over with tales of how spacious and elaborate the place was. Everyone would get to have their very own bedroom, there were four bathrooms instead of two.

Sara stated, "It won't be for a while. We have to take a lot of time to fix it up and make it good to live in again.

"At least we'll get out of this creepy place sometime," Billy said.

###

_Aickman lit the final candle before allowing the séance guests to enter the room. He'd just finished a very engaged, yet hushed, conversation with one certain middle aged woman in a maroon velvet dress. Though Jonah could not hear their voices very well, they didn't appear to be speaking English. Their faces were serious, almost frantic, as they spoke in what Jonah assumed was Aickman's native Swedish. He couldn't help but wonder what business they had with each other, although he'd learned not to question much concerning Aickman and his acquaintances. Jonah was to simply do his job and nothing more._

_The woman entered the room, sat next to him on his left, and eyed him suspiciously for a long time. She turned to murmur something in Swedish to Aickman, "Han är uppenbarligen inte frisk. Hur är detta att fungera?"_

_Aickman held a finger to his smirking lips. "Bara lita på mig." Then he said, "Let us all join hands. We shall have the lady in velvet go first. Miss, inform our Medium whom you wish to contact." Jonah noticed a curious, clever twinkle in Aickman's eye that was usually evident while he relished in the sight of Jonah's mid-séance pain, but this time it seemed different. Aickman and this woman were up to something―and Jonah felt most uncomfortable about it._

_"Very well," said the lady in an accent similar to but thicker than Aickman's, "My name is Marja Stromqvist, and I wish to contact my deceased son. His name is Josef." Marja swallowed, became so anguished and mournful, "He was about your age when he died, you know that? He―bless you both, he had an innocent little face just like yours."_

_This struck Jonah. Sitters were never supposed to talk to him beyond telling them the person he was to find for them. Aickman hushed Marja before she could continue her ranting, and Jonah broke eye contact with her to begin his business. The feeling of foreboding, of hovering danger, intensified. Jonah had a difficult time concentrating._

_"Jonah?" Aickman impatiently hissed. "Jonah!"_

_He snapped out of his hesitation and handed his body and mind over to the other side._

_It was impossible for him to recall the séance past the search for Josef; the possession and the manifestation of the ectoplasm did not stay in his memory. All Jonah could register in his own mind was the pain, for his thoughts weren't his anymore. All he could do was feel was pain through a thick black veil of stolen conscience._

_The burning in his throat was different and more painful this time, the use of his body more cruel than ever. He felt truly weakened and close to death. The last thought that went through his mind between the blast and the blackness was, "Josef is evil…"_

###

December 18, 1987.

In the late afternoon, Jonah alternated between staring at the bright, fluorescent snowfall outside and the burning fireplace. Both pained his eyes. He watched the logs disintegrate under the fire, morbidly picturing himself in their place.

He hadn't just remembered that night by choice. It came to him more like a vision than a memory, and he felt certain that Josef had showed it to him. Once given the information, Jonah easily put the pieces together to arrive at a shocking conclusion. Josef was the long-lost son of Aickman and Marja, Josef who caused the ectoplasm to catch fire. _It was I who killed everyone around you, _Josef seemed to say. It was also Josef's plan to rouse the other angry spirits in the house and trap Jonah and burn him.

But why did Josef want him dead in the first place? What did he have against his father's apprentice-turned-slave? It seemed that Josef had a lot of love for his parents, despite the fact that he chose to kill them as well. Perhaps Josef felt resentful of Jonah, jealous, for Aickman in his delusions had begun to call Jonah his son.

He racked his brains searching for a possible explanation. Ultimately, he came up with the theory that Josef killed the rest of the séance sitters along with his parents to isolate Jonah as he tried to run. Perhaps he also claimed his parents so they could be with him. After all, while in the graveyard, Jonah did find Ramsey Aickman's grave and knew that he'd passed on, as well as his ex-wife Marja.

And now, Jonah sat in a warm fire-lit living room, closely approaching his seventeenth and seventy-seventh birthdays. Alive and breathing once again, Josef's plan reversed. The young, dead Swedish boy would not stand for it. Jonah needed to die again, and Josef would not rest until he succeeded once again, this time forever.

The front door burst open, marking the entrance of the two teenagers home from school. Jonah left the living room to greet them. Upon the return of school from Christmas break, it had been decided that Jonah would join Wendy and Matt in the junior class at Goatswood Public High School.

He watched Wendy take off her coat, and hung it up for her. Her cheeks were rosy and little melted flakes of snow rested in her hair. Jonah longed to grab her and kiss her, but he had to refrain.

_I can handle Josef, _he thought to himself. _He can kill me a thousand times over if he wishes to, as long he doesn't harm Wendy, or Matt, or anyone else in this family. It's my job to protect them, once again._

_

* * *

_

**AN: I don't really have anything to say about this chapter, but I need to announce that I changed a major plot point that was in the previous chapter. There is NO LONGER a connection between Jonah and his blue rock. I was skeptical about the thing in the first place and finally decided to nix it. I edited the previous chapter and just cut the scene out. Just forget! The rock is no longer a truly significant plot device.**


	17. Sixteen Going On Seventy Seven

**AN: WOO FINALLY! I took a hiatus to get my stuff together. There was a point where I was compeltely undecided as to where I was going with this thing. I've gotten interested in some other things and horror movies-namely "The Hunger Games" books (highly recommend reading them) and the indie horror flick "Seconds Apart", about murderous twins! (Attractive teenage boy twins; one's named Jonah XD). In addition, d****uring the summer I like to write novels, things I might like to publish one day. **

**Also, in the meantime I've published not one but TWO stories since this story's last update-both are for the HiC fandom, both are hiding in the M rated section. One is a Jonah/Wendy song-fic lemon-fest, and the other is an alternative story in which Jonah survives the night of the seance and he's trying to recover. Please check them out if you haven't yet by now! :D**

**So happy to be back! Please enjoy!**

* * *

December 29, 1987

Oh, how peaceful he looked. Laying on his left side, all curled up, one ivory-pale leg sticking out from underneath the covers, perfectly still in a deep sleep. Matt felt bad about it, but he could not resist. He tiptoed close to Jonah's bedside. He leaned in close to Jonah's face and yelled:

"_Jonah! Wake up, birthday boy! Happy birthday, you old fart!"_

The helpless victim jolted awake with a little yelp. He sprung upright in bed, hurriedly covering his exposed skin with the blankets. "Matt!" he shouted, his voice cracking in the middle of the vowel. "Oh, my God, Matt―you―!" He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and proceeded to shove Matt's shoulders. As soon as he did that, some of his irritation subsided and he laughed. "It _is _my birthday. I think I'll just lay back down and sleep for the rest of the day―never come upstairs," he moaned.

"No, you can't do that!" Matt mussed Jonah's bed-tangled hair. "Everyone's happy and excited for you."

"Everyone but _me_. What business do they have wanting to celebrate for me, anyway?"

Matt smiled sincerely and sat himself down on the edge of Jonah's bed. "Well, I don't know―It's kind of special. I mean, you finally get to be seventeen."

Jonah was silent for the longest time. He kept his gaze downward and sighed. "That's the thing. It's all wonderful and joyous for them, but to me it's like―I'm aging. Time is going on, I'm getting older, this whole thing is _real _and, you know…before I know it I'll be forty. It's so very bizarre, and a bit morbid."

"You shouldn't think of it that way. Just―come on, get up and get dressed. Come upstairs. I know you hate being the center of attention, but just try and have fun. Or something. Please―for everybody. For _Wendy._"

Jonah gave him a strange glare for mentioning Wendy in such a way, but finally pulled himself out of bed. "Privacy, Matt?" he said. "I'll be upstairs in a few minutes. I promise."

###

Sloppy bits of metallic blue wrapping paper laid scattered across the living room floor. Jonah's few, small, mediocre gifts sat in a pile on a couch cushion, waiting to be taken downstairs with him later on. The family had chosen the smart route and given him inexpensive little trinkets, and clothes, for his birthday. Anything big or elaborate would've caused him to become embarrassed, ashamed, and he would have lashed out.

Wendy guessed that the reason Jonah loathed receiving gifts was because he felt undeserving of them. The Campbells weren't his real family, why did they bother spending money on him?―he wondered. Perhaps he was still used to living as an invisible splinter in the woodwork, rejected and abused and uncared for, from his time with Aickman as his only familial figure. The attention, love, and gifts overwhelmed him and anger was the only way he could think of to react to it.

Now, they gathered around the table to devour the chocolate, buttercream-iced birthday cake. Jonah stared at his thin slice as if he didn't believe it was actually there. Wendy herself had slathered the thick layer of icing onto the cake with all the love in her heart, despite knowing that the birthday boy would hardly eat any of it.

Eventually, Jonah did pick up his fork and swallow his sweets without a word.

"Well," Jonah breathed. He appeared hesitant as to what to say next. "I―um, I just wanted to say thank you. For everything. I mean, it's―you didn't have to. Any of this, I would never have specifically requested it, and I'm grateful for it. I really am―even though I don't look like it very often." After a heavy breath, he got up and set his dishes in the sink. "Am I excused now?" he asked, with a tinge of impatience that only Wendy and Sara seemed to pick up on.

"Uh―Sure," Sara said. She pleaded him with her eyes, _Don't go just yet._

Jonah ignored the signal and strode off anyway. Wendy fought an instinct to chase after him.

As soon as he was gone, Sara broke into a series of quiet little sobs.

Matt touched his mother's shoulder. "Come on, Mom," he said. "You expect too much of him. This whole birthday thing was great and all, and deep down he really appreciated it, like he said―but maybe you should try and back off a little bit. Let him come to you. It'll take forever, but with Jonah, the last thing you wanna do is suffocate him. Love hurts him a lot more than it ever hurt me. I mean, he probably can't let go of his real mom…"

Wendy stood from her chair and quietly murmured, "I'll go see what the deal is."

"That's right, Wendy!" Matt said somewhat bitterly, "Go work your super Wendy magic."

She traced his steps downstairs into the main part of the basement, the stone walls and stained tile, the only portion of the house unharmed from a fire that travelled upward. Jonah wasn't in his and Matt's bedroom. Wendy peeked through a slight opening in the bathroom door. He wasn't to be located in there, either.

"Jonah?" she called in an ineffective hushed voice.

There was only one place left to check―Wendy felt certain that he would be there. Why hadn't it been obvious from the start? She turned the handle on the foreboding door to the mortuary, slowly and softly as not to startle Jonah.

The boy sat on the filthy mortuary floor, his back against the brick structure of the furnace he died in. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples, rocking back and forth, as if in a childlike attempt to soothe himself. Upon hearing her, he stopped to look up at her with a subdued expression.

"Hey," she whispered, and knelt on the floor next to him.

"Hi." His voice sounded short, uncomfortable. "I just―I needed to have some silence. On my own. I'm not feeling sulky or anything." But that was a lie, she knew it.

She started her hand at the top of his head, smoothing his hair and sliding it down to stroke his cheek with the back of her hand. Down further, she ran her fingernails over the back of his neck, which caused him to shudder in pleasure at the tickling sensation. She knew his spine was a sensitive epicenter for him.

Wendy then dropped her hand down his torso and entwined her fingers with his. "It's gonna be okay," she said. "The day is coming to an end. You at least got some nice clothes and a few books. You even got to have cake, compliments of yours truly." They exchanged grins. "It wasn't so bad, was it? Even Billy and Mary didn't pout as much as I thought they would. You're seventeen―or seventy-seven, whichever you prefer to think about." She paused; he still did not look convinced. "And it'll get easier―every day it will. Look how far you've come since October―two and a half months. From not even talking or eating or getting out of bed for, like, a week; to…_now_." She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb.

His mouth twitched up into a genuine smile. "It'll get easier because I always have you to make it better."

"Not completely true. Of course _I'm_ here. But you also have Matt, and Sara, and Peter. We're all here. Even though―I guess I'm you're first choice." Her face became warm with a sudden rush of blood.

Jonah brushed his lips tenderly against hers. Wendy set her hands on the back of his head, keeping him close, asking for more. She never told him that their kiss in the graveyard had been her first kiss. First _real_ kiss―she didn't believe the truth or dare-inflicted encounter in fifth grade counted, at least not compared to the true feelings she experienced while kissing Jonah.

His saliva tasted like the cake, wet and warm and enticing as he slipped his tongue into her mouth. She reveled in the noises the deeper kisses made―smacking and sucking even more beautifully than the exaggerated noises in the movies.

They pulled apart, knowing that they could not get carried any farther into the dreamy world of kisses lest they get caught.

"Jonah," she murmured, "come here. Come this way. I can't take it anymore―I need to show you something." The couple crawled on hands and knees the few feet toward the cabinets. Wendy yanked on the cupboard containing Jonah's books as he stared in puzzlement. (She had taken Aickman's journal into her room along with the picture of him she'd snatched―so he needn't find that and have it upset him).

"I'm so sorry," she said. "I was snooping again. But I found something you might like. Or, rather, like _back_." She gathered the stack of antiqued novels and handed them to him. His breath caught in his throat. Then he gave into a shaky-lipped smile.

He claimed the books, flipping through some of them in awe. "Your inquisitive personality comes so much in handy at times," he said.

She suddenly blurted, "Why did he take them from you?"

Jonah swallowed. "He thought they were 'crowding my head.' Fictional stories were getting in the way of my powers and blocking my ability to reach people on the other side. Also, I'd made him rather angry that day. I don't want to talk about it anymore." He rubbed his left shoulder in a suspicious way, as if hinting to Wendy that he'd been hit there.

So she lovingly patted that same shoulder and kissed his forehead. "That's okay, Jonah. And again―happy birthday."

###

December 31

"I sear, we need to get ourselves a van. Or something with more seats. There's _seven _of us now!" Peter laughed, more to himself than to anyone else.

The clan was rounding themselves up to go see the new house, finding that travelling to a single destination as one single family with no one left behind was to be a difficult task with only regular-sized cars.

"Okay, so―Teenagers in one vehicle, and adults and kids in the other. Let's go, everyone."

Jonah stood next to Matt by Matt's red '81 Pontiac. He became more and more irritated by the second at how complex a process they made it to get the family rounded up. Just get everyone in their coats, get in the damn car, and drive. He hated standing out there in the cold, the itchy stocking cap Sara made him wear pushing his bangs down into his eyeballs.

Wendy finished buckling her little sister into the back of Peter's Buick and approached the boys. Matt declared, "First come, first serve! Jonah gets shotgun!" Then he turned to the boy in question. "Don't worry, Jo. I'll drive nice and carefully…but I will have to go fast."

"It's okay!" Jonah snapped, his nerves worn thin. "I need to hurry up and get used to it anyway."

He slipped in the passenger seat, and Wendy sat in the back directly behind him. The interior of Matt's car at least smelled better―it smelled of cinnamon air freshener and Matt's soapy cologne, instead of the other car, which smelled faintly of cigarette smoke from previous owners. Jonah maintained his straight face through the entire car ride. Everyone was silent, though Matt attempted to make idle chat on one or two occasions.

They pulled into the courtyard of the former Herrell estate. A wave of dread and grief cut through his chest once again, at the sight of it. Somehow it'd improved, since the basic restoration had begun on the structure.

The family and Jonah gathered in the front yard. "All right," said Peter, "we're going to go inside, check things out, and I want you all to pick out your bedrooms. There's one for each of you, as you know."

A stampede of five minors broke into the house. Jonah could not contain his winces as the smaller ones skidded around corners and pounded up the stairs. Then a thought occurred to him―he needed his former bedroom. He would not allow anyone else to have it. With little concern as to what the others would think of the sudden outburst, he broke into a run and chased the children up the grand wooden staircase. All five doors in the hallway were open―three being bedrooms, the others a bathroom and James Herrell's former study.

When he reached the top, the children were just exiting his bedroom; for some reason they had both found it inadequate. Jonah really could not understand why, for his room was the largest, brightest, and best room that was not the master one. However, he rejoiced in their differences in taste of rooms. He practically leapt into the room and announced, "This one is mine!" He did not even bother to say it politely, claiming what was rightfully his with the fervor of a vulture.

Peter calmly ventured past the doorway. He gave Jonah a light nod and a thumbs-up in approval.

Jonah nudged the door most of the way closed to allow himself some privacy as he examined what his childhood sleeping quarters had become. The sight stole his breath; he couldn't figure out whether to be elated or mournful. Of course, the space had decayed like the rest of the house. A leg on the frame supporting his bed had broken, leaving the mattress to rest at a downward-left slant. Yet, a startling amount of his possessions―the ones he'd left behind when he went away to work―were still there, except mostly broken or faded.

His old fountain pen, his various porcelain figurines, souvenirs from his father's trips abroad, even some books. On the wall, the gaudy green floral wallpaper was ripped and sagging. Some of the frames holding photographs and artwork that once hung there now dangled at ugly angles, while others lay on the floor, the glass smashed.

None of this, however, distressed him very much. He knew how long he'd been away, how old he himself had grown. The only thing that bothered him was the mystery.

_They just left everything,_ he thought with a sick feeling in his abdomen. _They left it just as it was without hardly taking or changing a thing. What happened to them?_

Equally distressing was that, since his parents had left mostly everything, the Campbells had a large chance of finding a tell-tale artifact, putting the pieces together, and finding out that the house had been Jonah's once upon a time. He really did not want them knowing―he couldn't place a reason for why he felt that way, he just figured that the less they knew, the better.


End file.
